


Believer

by paxlux



Series: from coast to coast [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-14
Updated: 2011-02-14
Packaged: 2017-10-15 16:19:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/162620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paxlux/pseuds/paxlux
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Déjà vu all over again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Believer

**Author's Note:**

> Sequel to 'An Honest Mistake.' Still vague Season 1.

[i.]

The Mason-Dixon Line with the sun high overhead and there’s no wind, only the shimmer of the road. Windows down in the middle of the day without shadows, so Sam has a clear view as he watches his brother, driving sprawled, one hand on the wheel, other hand dangling where he’s got his arm propped on the door.

They’re winding south, which might be a coincidence and might not; there is a hunt, but they’re both glad to leave the northern coast behind, something haunted wanting to settle into their limbs and making them shiver.

Dean watches where he’s going, eyes on the cracked blacktop. He sighs a little, and Sam thinks he doesn’t realize he’s done it, a push of breath like he’s tired, so Sam reaches out, gets a hand on Dean like he needs to be assayed on a touchstone, to show proof of their alloys, how they’re made and fit.

“What?” Dean says, glancing at him.

“You need to stop?” Sam asks, though he doesn’t really have anything else to say, needs to say something though since Dean asked, because they’re new to just putting hands on each other, just touching to touch with this recent intent, like they’re blind and this is all they want to see. Dean would give him grief if Sam didn't say something to go along with the hand on his shoulder.

“Nah, we’ll keep going. See if we can’t cover a good stretch of land before nightfall.”

Mirror image (and they’ve had enough of mirrors, of things breaking so easily, of everything mirroring that look in Dean’s eyes, like he didn’t believe Sam when he looked back at Dean) as Dean stretches to get his arm along Sam’s, fingers on Sam’s shoulder, up into the curling ends of his hair.

Then Dean’s hand slips away as he says, “Surprised you’re not asleep yet.”

Sam lets go too and Dean shrugs him off.

“Gotta make sure you don’t go off the road.”

“Yeah, ‘cause I’m a lousy fucking driver.”

“You said it,” Sam says, “I didn’t.”

Dean shakes his head, sighs again, like it’s a reflex, and they’re headed south, to where there’s a hunt, and the heat coils like a snake around the heart of Dixie.

 

[ii.]

Suicides. Suicides in the damp dark, though some are during the day, broad daylight, which Sam finds at once unbearable and awfully appropriate, because if you’re going to shed your own blood, why not do it when and where you can see it, how it runs from you like it’s been freed, at long last.

He knows what it’s like to be suicidal. Once he understood a few things, he thought Dean was just this side of suicidal, hunting with a fierce recklessness and restlessness that was almost as fickle as the death his brother sought; once when they were both still considered teenagers, Dean spent the spring of that year doing incredibly stupid things, in the cold and the rain, falling to his knees in the mud, soaked and bleeding as if waiting for the thing they were after to rip open his chest, tear out his throat, disembowel him right in front of Sam. Once he understood a few things, how he knew he’d do the same because Dean does that to him, scares him and urges him and pushes him, after he understood, he’d punched his brother, What the hell, Dean, you wanna die, and Dean had looked back at him, blood running down his neck, No, Sammy, no, you don’t protect your left, you leave yourself open on your left, and Sam had turned on his heel, turned his back on Dean there with the monster brought down dead on a empty plain.

The left side of his body is where his heart is, and after that, Sam overcompensated, breaking a couple of his ribs, and Dean scowled at him in the flat-lit hospital room and didn’t talk to him for two days. Sam kept saying, Dean, I did what you told me, shouldn’t’ve listened to you, like usual, and he kept saying it over and over to get a rise out of Dean because his brother silent and scared, his hands shaking as he rewrapped Sam’s ribs every day, Dean like that was more than Sam could take.

Protecting his left became a bad joke for how determined Dean was to keep him alive and how stubborn Sam was about stopping Dean from making them a pair of old murder-suicide statistics.

Once he understood a few things, he thought Dean was just this side of suicidal, and so it was up to Sam to say some things are worth keeping.

Sam knows Dean would never do that, never just leave him behind, but he also knows if they ever break, they’ll break the same, hard and fast, and it’ll be permanent; whatever happens, you never hear the bullet that kills you even if you’re the one pulling the trigger.

Hunched at the little rickety table, Sam thinks, Hello darkness, my old friend. He shuffles the newspaper articles, and his fingertips come away black from smudging over the smiling faces of all the suicides they’re here to investigate.

Dean comes through the door, balancing beers and jerky and licorice. “Have you even moved? You were there when I left.”

“Yeah, it’s called research.”

“No, it’s called being a freak. Stop getting your freak on and go grab the rest of the stuff.”

It’s a pitch black night when Sam steps outside and some of the suicides were at night and he can understand that too because if the blackness is all you can see, why not join it in every way you can.

Then Dean yells, “Dude, there’s only one bed.”

And Sam laughs under his breath. “I was wondering how long it’d take you to notice,” he says when he’s back inside the room and Dean’s watching him, head tilted.

“Trying to pull one over on me, Sam. Kinda obnoxious.”

“Just figured you should get used to one bed.”

Something like uncertainty fills Dean’s edges and Sam frowns, setting the bags down by the table. “Whatever, man, I can sleep on the couch.”

Crinkling as Dean fiddles with a licorice package, then he says, “Nah. If something decides to come through the door, I can use you as a human shield,” stretching his hands like he’s measuring how much of Sam he can hide behind.

So Sam kisses him, and Dean holds on as if he really was scared there for a brief second.

 

[iii.]

It’s Louisiana and the trees are thick everywhere, like vines, with the heavy way the air smells as if everything is constantly crowding up out of the dark ground and swamps.

The fluorescent light over their booth is flickering, the same as the last light in the last hospital when Dean had been kicked in the chest by a possessed horse, a ranch underneath a cloudless sky and the hospital staff had been the same way, clear and faceless, talking at Sam as he stood under the fucking flittering fluorescent, just wanting news of Dean and whether his ribcage was crushed.

That was before New England, before Dean would quietly tangle their legs together under the table as he drank his coffee and not look at Sam, just cut into his eggs as if it was a regular day and they hadn’t woken up together, sweating, with Dean’s mouth pressed to the pulse in Sam’s throat.

Across from him, Dean takes a sip and makes a face, like he was expecting something else and that really wasn’t it. The waiter breaks out of his lazy circuit, a slow circle, the same as the ceiling fan overhead, and says, “Somethin’ wrong with the coffee?”

Dean glances up. “Uh, no, yeah, it’s —“

The waiter leans down a little, tipping his head as if he’s got a secret. “Go down two blocks, and over one. Stop in there, they have the best, _trust_ me.”

“Chicory?” Dean asks, a hopeful flash in his eyes and Sam’s struck surprised, because this is new, a difference he’s missed somewhere, maybe picked up while he was gone and he shifts uncomfortably in the booth, the fake vinyl sticking to his clothes and his clothes sticking to him though it’s only nine in the morning.

“ _Yeah_ , friend, you follow my directions,” the waiter says. “Soon as you can.” He snags the cup out of Dean’s hands and smiles. “Come back and thank me later.”

Smirking, Dean nods, pushing his plate away to get an elbow on the table. “Appreciate it. Been wanting some chicory for a while now.”

They’re talking about coffee, even if they are smiling at each other, it’s not flirting though Dean has that certain way with people, a connection which either corrupts or calls, and Sam feels stranded, left out, so he tries to extricate his ankles from where Dean’s holding him captive, but Dean’s hand on the table moves, like he’s signaling. The waiter says, “Don’t blame ya, once you’ve had chicory, hard to get the taste outta your mouth.”

Sam shifts again, and maybe he has missed something, it’s gone right by him, but he merely leans back, lifting his shoulders and the waiter sees him, takes a moment to survey him, says, “Yeah, you could do with a good cup yourself.”

Dean does something complicated with their legs, somehow pulls Sam in, and they might be jealous of each other, a warning like the flickering light over the booth, and the last thing they need is probably more caffeine, but the waiter nods like a southern sage in a greasy-spoon apron.

He walks away, pointing down the street, and the light finally goes out, and these are the signs, Sam thinks, these are signs having to do with his brother as Dean glances at him and smiles, huge and happy about something as little as a cup of chicory coffee.

When they leave, Dean’s hand is on the small of Sam’s back as the waiter waves them out the door, and Sam wonders.

He’s always watched Dean and wondered, but it’s been in the past about someone else, and now that someone is Sam, and yeah, he needs a cup of coffee.

 

[iv.]

There’s ash on their boots and ash in their mouths and when they walked in through the door held open with a cracked brick, they were greeted by the skeleton of a snake, twisted around with wires as if in mid-strike. The eyeless skull stares at them, fangs bared, as they drink the chicory coffee and Dean makes a small noise in the back of his throat.

“This’s what I wanted,” he says, and Sam wants to ask how long, but it’s a question Dean won’t answer, _how long_ is something Dean will ignore, because it could mean anything, and it usually means too much.

There’s a line of ash at the threshold of the tiny standalone building, their tracks scuffing through it. It’s hidden away off a side street, and once they were given their coffee, the waitress disappeared, a nicotine-stained finger in her mouth. They’re the only ones there now, balancing on mismatched chairs, sawdust scattered around the linoleum floor.

“So,” Dean says, “suicides.”

Sam takes a drink and the coffee runs thick through him. “’Bout six of ‘em.”

“In this parish? That’s a helluva lot.”

Here in the South, it’s doing things to Dean, bringing things to the surface, and Sam squints at him. “Parish.”

“Yeah, parish. Louisiana. Par-ish.” Two syllables, and Dean overemphasizes both of them.

“And the coffee?” Sam asks because he might as well ask, perversely wanting to know what Dean knows.

“What about the coffee.”

“Really, man, chicory.”

“Just wanted some,” Dean says, shrugging, almost upsetting the table because it doesn’t sit right on its legs, loose and unstable. “Not sure what that has to do with the suicides, Sammy.”

Sighing, Sam runs a hand through his hair. “You’ve never.” You’ve never mentioned it before, you’ve never said anything about parishes and chicory and how you know about the wire threaded through the snake vertebrae, you’ve never said anything about taking lukewarm showers to wash off the sweat after sex, in the humidity spread deep like heavy rain.

You’ve never said anything about while I was gone.

You’ve never said anything about anything now that I’m back.

You’ve never said.

You would’ve never said anything until New England.

“Suicides,” Sam surrenders. “Six of ‘em. All committed the same way.”

“Razors?” Dean asks, looking over the rim of his cup at Sam, and his eyes are shadowed in the dim light of the building, the windows coated with dust.

“Something sharp,” Sam says, taking another sip and Dean’s gaze tracks him, makes his belly shiver.

“Even the women?”

“Yeah. Across their wrists.”

As if Sam’s said the secret password, a single charm unlocking some corner of his brother, Dean rubs at his own wrists, staring at his coffee. He traces down his arms, instead of the misunderstood slash across, and Sam knows, thinks, That’s how it’s done, maximum bleeding effect, because you have to sever all the veins.

The white clean skull of the snake stares at them, striking out with its fangs, and Sam thinks, I’ve never said.

I’ve never said anything to you either.

 

[v.]

The air conditioner’s crapped out in their motel room, this little rusted thing hanging on the wall, and Dean kicks it viciously.

“Like that’ll help,” Sam says, annoyed and sweating.

Dean looks at him, all righteousness and vengeance in his face, “Makes me feel better, so how the fuck ‘bout that.”

Sam rolls his eyes because this isn’t helping at all, the room feeling smaller in the scrum of damp heat, even smaller when Dean sighs and flops down on the bed, splayed out uncomfortable.

“Find us something to research so we can get outta here,” he says to the ceiling and Sam sighs out loud this time.

“What, so we can go _out_ in the humidity? Do you know what the car’ll be like?”

“Hey, indoors, outdoors, right now, it’s all the same, Sam.”

“The library probably has air conditioning. Think you can handle the library,” Sam says, shuffling pages and Dean raises his head a little to watch Sam’s hands, or at least that’s what it looks like, and for some reason, Sam’s suddenly self-conscious, all the thoughts he’s had about getting his hands on his brother, even during their fights, because it all comes down to grounding himself in Dean.

So when he stands, he drops the papers on the table and Dean’s still watching his hands as he gets closer, then when he grabs his brother’s shirt, Dean finally looks up, something in his gaze, like he’s lost and losing his way fast, not looking back to see where he’s been, but Dean doesn’t really care, Sam can tell, since he’s got his palm spread wide on Sam’s back, guiding him close.

“Air conditioning,” Sam says against Dean’s mouth, “remember, ‘the greatest invention ever’?”

“’Sides the conveyor belt my baby rolled off, yeah,” Dean says, sliding slick to Sam’s throat. “The library, huh.”

“Best bet.”

It’s too hot to do anything, so they shift to the sides of the bed, knees touching.

Dean closes his eyes, fingers tapping a rhythm against Sam’s collarbone, and it isn’t Morse code, or any sort of superstition, simply Dean before he says, “This weather’d make anyone commit suicide.”

“I think there’s more to it than that,” Sam says, counting the taps, faster slower, it isn’t any song he knows, possibly an impressively long drum solo Dean’s memorized over the years, and Dean doesn’t reply.

The weather is enough to make anyone commit suicide, slow and thick and with no end in sight, and Sam says, “Maybe it’ll be better after dark.”

Dean says, “Everything’s better after dark,” a smirk curling against the blue-purple bedspread.

And maybe it’s morbid, maybe it’s Sam lost and losing his way, but he thinks it could end like this, everything, in the moody weather, on a bed with Dean, with his fingers still on Sam’s skin.

“The library then,” he says, “let’s go.”

But suicides should be hard, shouldn’t be so easy, not like New England, where Dean was looking into mirrors and seeing so many things he shouldn’t.

“Pour me in a bucket and carry me,” Dean says as Sam sits up, his hair stuck to his forehead.

“Guess I’m driving.”

Sam grins and Dean scowls and at the car, they have to roll the windows down, not touch anything metal, and sit hunched forward like it’s some sort of new ritual that goes with the territory.

 

[vi.]

The library is cooler, but still damp, and Dean mutters something about swamp lands and things crumbling into the water, just slipping right into the bogs never to be seen again.

“Gators?” Sam asks and Dean glares before Sam sends him off on a research errand because they’re only at the fake wood-topped table for about fifteen minutes and Dean’s knee is jiggling, his hands fiddling with a pen, papers, the keys in the pocket of his jeans. It’s always the way, the way of all things Dean that even in the soupy heat, Dean is motion and impatience and ready to get a bead on something.

But it’s obvious they’re related because right after Dean disappears, Sam’s knee starts jiggling, he worries his lip with his fingers, and he catches himself doing it, thinks that when Dean comes back, he’ll greet his brother with a mouth full of toner, wiped black across his lips as if he’s been eating evil, so he tries to keep his palms on the table, leaving full sweating handprints, and when he has to turn a page, he avoids the pictures, avoids the whole swaths of paragraphs describing death.

Then Dean’s there, rounding through the stacks, and he’s watching Sam again, like Sam doesn’t know it, like he hasn’t known it for years.

“You got a smudge,” Dean says, dumping his papers onto Sam’s neat piles.

“Wonderful.”

Dean sits down, pointing in the vague direction of Sam’s face. “A smudge, doofus, right there.”

Sam wipes at his jaw with the back of his hand before trying to fix his research piles: not related, possibly related, in the shit. He keeps that last one farthest away from him because it’s typically thin, and he doesn’t need any reminders of how these cases usually run.

“So, suicides,” Dean says, and it sounds familiar, déjà vu, and the librarian harrumphs behind them while Sam raises his eyebrows.

“Uh, yeah, suicides, I think we’ve gone over that.”

“Just checking. Never know. Sometimes it changes once we get started.”

Tilting back in his chair, Dean says it like he’d say _check and mate_ , because if he can’t tease Sam about something new and relevant, there’s the old standby of research and sometimes how wrong Sam is.

Which is why the thin pile is called “in the shit,” not only because they’ll probably end up knee-deep in it, but also because it’s the hunt and most days, there’s nothing worse.

“Suicides,” Sam says, and it’s becoming a magic word of sorts, maybe if they repeat it enough it’ll go away. “The newspapers are pretty barebones about most of these. You get what —“

“A whole lotta bupkis, though that,” Dean lets the chair fall forward and he pushes at the pages, “that I find hard to believe in a town this size.”

“Thought it was a parish.”

“Town, parish, same thing.”

Louisiana, Sam thinks, and Dean tilts his chair back again. “What do the newspapers say?”

“So far, I was right,” Sam says as Dean huffs a laugh. “Six confirmed. There might be more.”

“More,” Dean says, a hand on the table to stabilize him as he rocks on the back legs.

And Sam knows what he’s thinking, about how they’re too late because the car can only go so fast and news only spreads as the crow flies and one is an accident, two is a coincidence, three is incidental, but “more” is what makes it out of the ordinary.

It always takes more.

Dean’s dragging his fingers down his wrists, like cuts, and Sam thinks, Déjà vu all over again.

 

[vii.]

All the wheres are different. All the whens are different. But all the hows are not.

“We’re gonna need the police reports.”

“Psych evaluations.”

“They wouldn’t have those, Dean,” Sam says, letting the chopsticks rest in the carton.

Dean contemplates a piece of chicken. “Sure they would. Anyone loony enough to commit suicide probably has priors.”

“Not loony,” Sam retorts.

Rolling his eyes, Dean pops the chicken in his mouth. “Fine, _not_ loony. Sad.”

It takes a lot more than sad, Sam wants to say, but he gets it, because depending on the circumstances, for Dean, there’s only happy or sad. It’s only when all the gray starts to seep in that things go wrong and he does something stupid. Like set himself up for bait. Or for a fall. Or with a self-fulfilling prophecy.

“So what, we’re the FBI investigating why this town is so depressing?” Sam asks.

“Parish.”

“Same thing.”

Déjà vu in the broken air conditioner swelter of Louisiana and Dean says, “Maybe it’s something in the water. Gotta investigate the water table.”

“Do you realize how lame that is.”

Dean shrugs, easy movement, shirt riding up a little and Sam sighs.

“So lay it all out for me, and I’ll think of something,” Dean says, as if he’s making amends which is new, but it must be the heat.

Motts, forty-five, in the kitchen, body found around nine in the morning after his wife thought he’d left for work.

Harper, twenty-seven, in the bathroom, body found around 8:37 pm by her boyfriend.

“8:37 pm?” Dean interrupts. “On the dot?”

“They had a date,” Sam says and Dean blinks. “You know. A date. Flowers, dress to impress, maybe dinner and a movie. Not surprising you don’t know what a – ”

“Shut up, Sammy, I get it.”

Dean’s eyes are bright and homicidal which means Sam’s done his job, but they go dull in a matter of seconds and Sam feels a little uneasy. Again he has the ghostly thought, he’s missing something, he’s missing whole chunks of time, and he’ll never get to have them, they’ll never come back.

Dizzy, he keeps reading when Dean waves his chopsticks in a circle _get on with it_.

Laramie, fifteen, in the sunroom, body found around 11 pm by his mother.

Dean says _fifteen_ on an exhale, and Sam remembers that exact same sound, Dean saying it in that precise pained way when Sam was fifteen and he was staring up at his brother through his bangs, demanding something, a chance, a change, an answer, a gun, something, and Dean had put his hand out and Sam had ducked away, thinking he might get hit, it might be a trick, it might be anything less than what he wanted. Dean had been hurt, just enough to show, before he shook his head and walked back into the motel room, leaving Sam to lean against the brick wall and skitter rocks down the sidewalk as he gritted his teeth.

Aguirre, fifty-eight, in the garage, body found around five in the morning by a jogging neighbor.

“A nosy neighbor,” Dean interrupts, “small town nosy neighbors,” and Sam says, “Can I go on?”

“Continue.”

“Thanks, Your Highness.”

Rawls and Boudreaux, twenty-three and thirty-four, respectively, in the bedroom, bodies found by Boudreaux’s wife.

Sam thinks, _in flagrante delicto_ , and Dean says, “Think we know what was happening there,” smiling sly around his rice, licking at soy sauce and Sam has to smile back because the guy-wire created between them pulls taut.

“So you think they stopped fucking just to commit suicide,” he says and Dean almost chokes on a water chestnut.

“Well, when you put it _that_ way, Sam, it sounds pretty freakin’ ridiculous.”

“That’s what we specialize in.”

Carton in hand, Dean hums, stands and moves to the window, pushing the curtains aside as if he expects to find the key to their hunt. “Suicides,” he says, and Sam’s starting to think Dean’s really stuck on the word, it’s becoming unhealthy, especially in this heat, maybe because of this heat, and then he realizes, they don’t specialize in the ridiculous, the unusual, they specialize in suicides, people doing stupid things, being in the wrong fucking place at the wrong fucking time, and sometimes it’s murder, and sometimes people call it down upon themselves.

“Dean.”

“What.”

Maybe what they do is suicide, every damn day, death prolonged, in slow flicker-frame motion.

But he’s got Dean, and his brother doesn’t turn around, just keeps looking out the window until Sam goes back to his papers.

 

[viii.]

There’s a rope in his hands and Sam doesn’t have to think about it, his hands already know how to shorten the rope, loop it, make the knot, wrapping around and around until it’s good enough for any executioner, any Old West posse, vigilante justice and bloody-minded bastards, he’s got a hangman’s noose in his hands and a stool to stand on.

It might be for himself, it might be for someone else, but it isn’t for Dean, he knows that. He can’t really feel the rope, but it’s there.

Murder, suicide, but Sam doesn’t think so; maybe he knotted it to show Dean, another thing he learned during his worn-thin teenage years, Dean actually taught him and then he made nooses out of everything: shoelaces, bandage wrapping, strings from his jeans. It seemed an important skill to have, for no apparent reason.

There’s a rope in his hands and a stool to stand on, then there’s a girl, smiling at him, sweet smile, she looks like Jess, except this girl has curling red hair and ink around her wrists, tattoo bracelets in black loops, intricate chains and she says, You’ll do.

Sam.

“What,” Sam says automatically, and he’s suddenly awake, hands clutching at nothing and Dean’s fingers are pressing at the soft of his belly, right at the vulnerable pulse.

“You were talking in your sleep.”

“What did I say?”

The warm pressure on his stomach eases. “You said, ‘You’ll do.’ You having pervy sex dreams without me?”

Dean’s smug in the late afternoon haze, eyes like light through glass in the gloom of the motel room. How did he ever get away from Dean? How did he escape, no, not _escape_ , how did he separate himself, because Dean’s always been there, he’s the big brother, he will always be there, and Sam’s the one who’s allowed to walk away, but that was then and this is now, this, Dean’s thumb stroking a short line on his skin and Sam isn’t sure about anything anymore except for what he knew then and what he knows now, so he says, “Gotta get my kicks somehow.”

And the smugness stretches into a full-blown wicked grin. “That’s my boy,” Dean says.

He might be moving to lever himself off the bed, but Sam catches him, holding Dean there. So Dean shrugs and kisses Sam, a light kiss, but Sam remembers escape, dizzy with everything he’s missed with his brother, and he deepens the kiss, tugging until it’s almost a fight.

“Day’s a-wastin’, Sammy.”

“Five more minutes.”

“Aren’t you raring to go talk to some witnesses? That’s, like, your bread-and-butter,” Dean says, slipping Sam’s hold and doing some complicated roll off the mattress he probably thinks looks like something from an 80s action movie.

“I thought research was my bread-and-butter,” Sam says, “you know, being a geek and all.”

“Yeah, that too.”

“So basically everything that involves not shooting something.”

“Bullseye,” Dean says, cocking a finger gun at Sam.

Sam feels cottonmouthed and heavy as he sits up. “I’m glad you have such faith in my hunting abilities.”

“We stick with what we’re good at.”

“Those who can’t do, teach.”

Dean laughs. “I already tried to teach you everything. You probably lost it all in California.”

He doesn’t say _at college_ , and besides, what a fucking stupid thing to say, they’ve been hunting together again, now, and inexplicably, Sam’s really fucking annoyed, so he doesn’t say anything because it’ll only get worse, arguing with Dean always gets worse, never goes the way he wants unless he’s feeling vicious and can somehow knock Dean off his game, since Dean will argue a thing into the ground, circular logic and odd non-sequiturs, movie references and tangents shooting in some lost direction until they come back around to stab Sam deep in the gut.

“Yeah, c’mon. What’re we this time? State troopers?”

“Maybe sometime we should try crime scene clean-up.”

It’s one of the most appropriate things Dean’s said in a while and it only prods at Sam’s annoyance.

Dean hmms and haws as they change into their suits, already feel wrinkled and flimsy in the heat, and Sam’s irritation feels wrinkled too, flimsy, he’s worn it so often, it’s like a second skin.

 

[ix.]

The kitchen is some sort of yellow-orange mixture which has Dean blinking and Sam stands too close because who knows what Dean’s going to say. Half the time he says the right thing and half the time he says the wrong thing and then there are those times he lays it all out on the line, for good or ill. Dean’s always a risk Sam’s taken, but with other people, Sam likes to be around for damage control, though he’s not sure sometimes if he’s damage or if he’s control because with Dean, the coin is constantly spinning, can fall both ways.

Mrs. Motts is a roly-poly little woman, who keeps smiling daintily and patting her hair when she’s not turning the tiny charm watch around and around her wrist. She smiles at them each in turn, as if she’s choosing, and Dean thinks he’s got this one all primed to answer anything he asks, Sam can tell, because he keeps leaning in a little, with his honey smile, _trust me, ma’am_ , and it’s never worked on Sam only because he’s seen it before, so many times, in fair weather or foul.

But she’s a local woman, born and bred in the heat and humidity, and there’s a saying about the steel underneath, a sharp edge to the sweet Southern violets.

She ushers them in, puts them in chairs and has them sipping something close to lemonade tea in the yellow-orange kitchen. It’s like being held captive by civility. Dean is fighting a grimace, either from the kitchen color, the tea or Mrs. Motts’s strong perfume, hyacinth or lavender.

Martin wasn’t suicidal, according to Mrs. Motts, “call me Patty.” She fiddles with a dishcloth, printed with teapots. “Financial troubles, but everyone’s havin’ those. We weren’t goin’ under, and I told Martin that. we were doin’ fine, my brother was goin’ to pitch in if necessary, but Martin wouldn’t hear of it, proud stubborn man, yes. But he wasn’t suicidal.” Her brown-gold curls bounce as she talks and Dean squints at her.

“Nothing else?” he asks and Sam can feel it, like a harbinger. “Problems at work? Gambling? Maybe there’s a nice girl he met somewhere —“

“He wasn’t steppin’ out, if that’s what you mean,” Mrs. Motts snaps, icy. “I’da known it and I know he wasn’t.”

Sam puts a hand up before either of them can say anything else. “Absolutely, Mrs. Motts. Now you said —“  
“Patty. Please,” she says, smiling again. “I insist.”

Dean shoots him a look, like he’s walking the line of murderous, and it’s Sam he wants to kill, since Sam dragged him here, with the jumped-up idea of rookie cops, tying up loose ends, which has to be the stupidest thing they’ve been in a while, all because _someone_ misplaced the detective shields (“they’re in the _trunk_ , Sam, _fuck_ , like you _never_ lose anything,” his brother about to make him lose his mind), so Sam hopes Mrs. Motts doesn’t pay attention to city law enforcement in her spare time.

“Patty,” Sam says, and Dean nudges his foot under the table, pointed. “You said you found him after you thought he’d left for work?”

“Oh yes, he was over there,” she says, flicking a careless hand, charms clinking.

Martin Motts, slumped against the cabinets, blood running over the linoleum, staining the faded tulip pattern. He’d mismatched his socks again, blue and black.

“It was just horrible,” Mrs. Motts says, dishcloth at her mouth. “I couldn’t believe it. Used my best carving knife. And I dunno why. Didn’t leave a note or nuthin’.”

“We are sorry, Mrs. Motts – uh, Patty, our sincere condolences,” Sam says, setting down his tea and Dean stands abruptly, hand inching up as if he’s already about to loosen his tie. And Sam should know better, he should, he should never turn his back on Dean when there’s a witness in their proximity, but he does because Dean has some sort of magic, hidden away, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. They’re lucky because today it does.

“Was there anything else?” Dean asks. “Anything unusual? Maybe something was out of place or —“

“I had to call animal control,” she says, voice tight, and there’s the steel again, cage falling down around her.

“Animal control?” Sam asks and Dean raises an eyebrow.

“There was a snake in the kitchen. Scared the livin’ daylights outta me. It was sittin’, I say sittin’, but y’know, _coiled_ , calm as you please, as if it lived here. Right next to my Martin, happy as a clam.” She shudders, curls bouncing again. “If snakes can be happy.”

Sam thinks of the skeleton at the ashy café, sightless skull and bleached bones.

He thinks they might get more than they bargained for because the darkness in the land here takes sweetly, without pity or mercy, and it takes to keep, here where the nights are deep and long.

The charms tinkle in the sunshine.

 

[x.]

It’s all wrong. Dean’s tugged his tie crooked even though they’re headed to the next on the list, but that’s not it. The heat is getting worse, brighter and drenching, and Sam shrugs inside his jacket, uncomfortable, a prickling on his shoulders.

The doors creak open and Sam slams his, because it’s all wrong.

“Dean, she didn’t seem that torn up,” he says, rubbing at his knees.

“What.”

“Mrs. Motts.”

“Oh, you mean, Patty, your sugar mama?” Dean drawls, easing them out of the neighborhood and the car is almost too vicious for the little square houses here, the flower boxes hanging sleepy under Mrs. Motts’s windows.

Sam hunches in the seat. “Yeah, well, I wasn’t the one trying to sweet-talk her, you dog you.”

Glancing in the rear view mirror, Dean sighs and says, “Not exactly the grieving widow.”

“Ready to throw herself on your tender mercies,” Sam says, fingers on the window.

“What, you jealous?”

He can’t imagine it. He can’t imagine spending half your lifetime (“married when we were nineteen, high school sweethearts, Martin almost peed his pants when he asked me”) with someone and then not being devastated, completely destroyed when they’re stolen from you. Because people aren’t taken, Sam hates that phrase, they’re stolen, a horrendous crime where everyone’s a victim and sometimes the murderer is the one left behind.

When the door opens at apartment 211B, Joe Berry’s all foggy eyes and trembling hands. His girlfriend Beth Harper committing suicide twenty minutes before their date, and Dean’s left to do the talking because Sam can only watch and half-listen, thinking about how there’s this time after Jess, now, here with Dean, not because he’s all Sam has left, a broken heart shared between them. Not that.

Then the door to apartment 211B is closing, pale Joe telling them not to call unless necessary, please just leave me in peace, and Dean’s hand on Sam’s arm is heavy, dragging him along.

“Where’d you space off to?” Dean grumbles, yanking at his tie. The car gleams and the metal’s too hot and suddenly, Sam feels superstitious about touching it.

But Dean’s still muttering and when he glances at Sam over the roof of the car, his expression is split-second lost, adrift without an anchor, like New England when he thought Sam would find his lost love in a mirror and leave.

Then Sam’s struck, in a blink like lightning, his fingers curling, nails sharp in his palms, because there is no _after Dean_.

He says his brother’s name and Dean’s saying, “What. Sam, _what_ ,” and he’s angry all over again that Dean doesn’t trust this, doesn’t trust them, but the only thing he can do his shake his head.

Once a long time ago, he understood a few things, he thought Dean was just this side of suicidal, and so it was up to Sam to say that some things are worth keeping. And since it’s Dean, he has to say it over and over, and he will until he runs out of breath.

 

[xi.]

“So one more witness or are we done?” Sam says, tired like it’s been days instead of hours, and when Dean shrugs at a red light, Sam lets his hand fall on Dean’s thigh, doesn’t explain it, lets it rest and Dean feels so differently warm, outside of the steady blast of late afternoon heat.

“I dunno,” Dean says, “seems like you couldn’t handle the last one.” It comes out grudging, like maybe he can understand, all these people losing loved ones because they were their own worst enemy, and maybe it’s hitting too close to home.

Which is absurd. Sam presses knuckles into Dean’s leg, pleased when Dean jumps and almost guns them through the intersection as the light turns green. “All right, one more.”

The neighborhood was once nice and is now a little worn, a little shabby, but there are toys on some of the lawns and the mailboxes shine at neat intervals.

The house numbers are brass and off-set of each other at a diagonal, but the six is crooked, so Sam fixes it as Dean rings the doorbell.

“Dude. C’mon.”

“What.”

Dean mutters under his breath, _always gotta be fixing something_ , and Sam wants to laugh, not because it’s true, more like a bitter misunderstanding, things should just be _right_ , but Dean thinks things have to be fixed, like them after blind separation, like them after Sam waited for a nor’easter at night to show Dean what he should’ve seen all along.

Mrs. Laramie answers the door in a faded t-shirt and sweats, a flush on her cheeks, and she apologizes for the mess, she’s a little slobby today, I wasn’t expectin’ visitors.

That’s all right, ma’am, won’t take up much of your time, just need to get a few questions answered, Sam is all simple reassurance and Dean nods. A single glance between them, and they’ll be careful with her because they can both see this woman is at odds and ends, a bandana tied back over her hair, her fingers cold when she shakes their hands.

“Todd isn’t like that,” she says. “You’d think. Because of his. His dad.” Mrs. Laramie smiles, grim, and looks down at the brown carpet. “His dad’s in prison. Armed robbery. Grand theft auto. Made a few mistakes.”

 _I’ll say,_ Sam can hear Dean in his head, the slow curl of syllables and the grin, but Dean doesn’t say it, lucky break, they’re two for two today.

Single mom, and she’s fighting the battles on her own, every day, ex-husband behind bars and no father-figure for her son; she frowns as she says again, “Todd isn’t like that. He’s a good kid. Was. My tenses are all.”

Dean makes a motion, hand out, and Sam’s seen it before, skinned knees and bullies at school, comfort in a stilled world, but he doesn’t touch her, not like with Sam, a hand on his neck, thumb rubbing under his hair. But that’s what Sam recognizes, the hand out, sympathy the way Dean knows how.

Pushing at her forehead with her wrist, she brushes her bandana crooked and says, “Good kid. Never gave me trouble. A's and B's in school. Running back, varsity squad.” At that, she meets their gaze, motherly pride and it’s then Sam notices her t-shirt, local high school, football booster club. She stands and says, “I ‘spose you wanna see the sunroom. Where I found him.” Then she kind of tilts her head, as if she has a headache, and says, “Sorry. My manners. Would ya like somethin’ to drink?”

They mumble no thank yous and she nods and leads them to the hallway, around a corner, a few steps down, a converted garage, her slippers soft on the carpet as she flicks a switch and steps aside.

The room is obviously the den of a teenage boy, a stand of weights in the corner, TV on a rickety yard-sale table, a ratty couch with protein bar wrappers and school papers. The walls are covered in pennants and hand-painted signs, Go Wildcats. There was a school of Wildcats in their own past somewhere, along with a few scattered trophies, lost to dust and Sam can read her fortune as Dean lightly touches a bookcase made of wood and cinderblocks holding up soldierly lines of trophies.

This room will never change.

There’s a dark splotch in front of the couch as she points and says, “There, right there, he was...” The police report stated he was sitting on the couch, wrists balanced on his knees, and the blood followed the flow of gravity, down his legs, pooling around his sneakers. Head leaned back to stare at the ceiling. The paring knife Mrs. Laramie used to peel pears with, Todd always hated the peel, ever since he was little.

“Almost stepped on the knife. If it’d been a snake, it woulda bit me,” she says, then purses her lips. “Well, in a manner of speakin’. The real snake didn’t even move.”

“Snake?” Sam says as Dean says, “There was a snake?”

“Yeah. Over yonder. Curled, no, coiled, that’s what it’s called, coiled. ‘Round that trophy,” Mrs. Laramie says. “Junior varsity, all-star running back. Set a school record for yards.”

Go Wildcats, Sam thinks. Todd Laramie, on a plaque somewhere.

“After they,” she starts, and clears her throat, fingers twisted in the hem of her shirt. Then she stands up straighter, metal strength in her spine and she looks each of them right in the eye, her chin raised, a little defiant. “After they carried away my son, I put that sonuvabitch snake in a sack, took it to the backyard and cut its damn head off.”

 

[xii.]

“Holy shit, Sammy,” Dean says, dark and low.

“I know,” Sam says, glancing back at the house.

Having a single parent of their own, wandering from place to place, their dad like a criminal with his silence and distrust of everything else outside of the three of them, his steady Marine ways and ability to take apart a gun blindfolded, it’s nothing like Mrs. Laramie and her butcher knife with the snake out back after her son’s been put on a gurney and carted through her front door.

Dean revs the engine a little like he can’t help it as he says again under his breath _holy shit_ and his hands are restless on the wheel, shifting and flighty, his brother always in motion. Sam’s too greedy for life, suicide would be the final, desperate option after he loses Dean, if he ever loses Dean, he won’t let Dean go first, his brother always in motion.

He recognizes Mrs. Laramie’s utter disbelief, Todd would never, I dunno why. He recognizes it because Dean is the same, a barely-contained force, hurricanes and states of emergency, wholly unbeatable, but he can lose power quickly, shut down and bleeding pain, and Sam’s the sole survivor, Sam has to tell him otherwise, remind him Dean’s little brother sometimes forgets to protect his left and doesn’t know what to do when the engine makes that peculiar knocking sound and can’t sleep without Dean in the same room. In the same bed.

Flicking at the radio, Dean says, “What. You’re staring.”

And Sam remembers mirrors, Dean ready to let go of his heart.

“Never seen anything so ugly before,” he says, swiping out lightly at Dean’s face and Dean flips him off, says, “You looked in a mirror lately.”

It’s too hot down here and the coffee is nothing but ash and Sam says, “Think I saw a barbeque place. Thataway.”

 

[xiii.]

Their plates are full, overflowing, and Dean stares out at the parking lot, watching the cars come and go as they eat, so Sam’s the one who tangles their legs, shinbones banging together and he tries not to think of rattling bones, they are in Louisiana. Dean drops the remnants of a rib and for a second, all Sam can see is a bone thrown in fire, the cracks telling the future, he hears the hiss of candles as something slides out of the water, out of the dark and a voice whispers in his ear, _you’ll do_.

Snakes.

“Yeah, pretty freakin’ weird,” Dean says, licking at his fingers and oh, Sam’s said it out loud, at least he’s not going out of his mind. His brother continues without missing a beat, “Can’t be a coincidence.”

“There’s no such thing as coincidence,” Sam says, hearing his dad say it.

“Thanks, Rod Serling.” Dean scowls. “Snakes. Goody for us.”

Dirty white flash of bone, dull flicker of a knife, _you’ll do_ , and it’s a stupid stereotype, the land they’re in, the dreams he’s had, the snakes crawling out of the countryside, but Sam’s feeling desperate. He can’t stop himself, says, “Voodoo.”

“Now you’re talking, Sam.”

When he looks up, Dean’s leaning forward, napkin destroyed in his hands, his eyes alight, and again, Sam’s superstitious, his brother doing this to him here in the heart of dark night country, the land where the dead are buried above ground, ready to walk at a moment’s notice.

Sam’s seen this expression before, the one where Dean knows something and is hiding it, like he’s waiting for Sam to get a clue, as if he’s known all along.

“You’ve been here before,” he says, a revelation, and Dean shrugs, indifferent, but his shoulders are a thick uneven line.

“Once,” he says, glancing back to the parking lot. “Told you. Back before.” He stops. “Before we went to Jericho.”

Before. Sam sighs, frustrated. “No, _you’ve been here._ Voodoo, Dean?”

“Not _here_ here. Not this town. Parish.”

“Fuck, dude, you know what I mean.”

Dean glares. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

That’s all he says and Sam grits his teeth. Waiting.

But that’s all he says.

 

[xiv.]

On the way back to the motel, Dean’s doing something complex, driving in circles or something, who the hell knows, Sam isn’t sure, but he’s seen that same corner of Fourth Street a few times now.

“Dean, what’re you doing?”

They end up sitting outside a large stone church, all arches, points and spires and the cross at the top of the tallest one is throwing its shadow along the ground, black and long, as the sun goes down and the heat doesn’t go away.

“Dean.”

Dean looks over his shoulder, back at the road they just left, like he’s counting corners in his head, and c’mon, they can’t get lost here in this town, parish, whatever, it’s not that big and he seems lost in his own head when another car pulls into the parking lot, a boat of a Cadillac, and Sam’s saying his brother’s name again as she gets out of the Caddy and heads towards the door of the church.

“Dean, it’s Mrs. Motts. Patty-I-insist.”

“What,” Dean says, finally turns to Sam, finally catches Sam’s gaze for the first time since they left the barbeque place.

“There goes your girlfriend, stud.”

“She smiled at you first.”

“You want sloppy seconds?” Sam says, prickling annoyed and wanting to share. It has the desired effect; Dean crinkles his nose, “What in the happy hell is wrong with you.”

“Just lucky, I guess.”

Dean’s door creaks open and he’s moving fast, waving at Sam, “C’mon, dummy, you keep just sitting here talking shit and we’re gonna lose her.”

The heat and annoyance have settled into Sam’s suit and belly, and he’s trying to be inconspicuous as he chases his brother who’s chasing a middle-aged woman into a church as dusk falls around them. And not for the first time, not for the last, of all potential presents and futures, he wonders how he got here. And not for the first time, not for the last, he already knows the answer, knows it when Dean turns around at the heavy wooden door of the church and his eyes are lamps in the growing swamp-dark, Sam knows exactly how he got here: one foot in front of the other, chasing after his brother.

Mrs. Motts is already at the front, near the altar, and they settle into a pew at the back, skirting the holy water. Dean can’t seem to settle, staring at everything, scooting down the pew until he’s closest to the flickering candles, the red glass votives lit like blood on fire. Following him, because that’s what Sam does, tethered, he hears Dean say something about salt and he doesn’t know what’s going on, especially when Dean glances at him, mouth open, as if he’s received inspiration or sacrament.

“Sammy.”

He doesn’t answer, watching as a priest appears from behind a pillar to talk to Mrs. Motts, all hushed tones, and he hears his name again.

“What, Dean?”

“May I be of service, gentlemen?” The priest is headed their way, Mrs. Motts in tow and she gives a little wave, charms tinkling.

“These nice boys stopped by earlier, Father, for some tea,” she says, “following up on Martin’s passing.”

The priest nods and sits in the row ahead of them, twisted to see them. “Police?” he asks. “Mr. Motts’s death was a tragic accident.”

Sam skips the police part and goes straight to the part knocking him sideways. “Accident?” he asks, because accident is nothing but a polite euphemism and in the crisp cold north, the last priest they spoke to asked Sam if he was a believer.

“Yes, such an unfortunate thing,” the priest says, nodding again, patting Mrs. Motts’s outstretched hand, “but his funeral was quite tasteful,” and Dean shifts next to Sam, their suit jackets brushing as Mrs. Motts dabs at her chin with a handkerchief.

“Uh, yeah, a tragic accident,” Dean says as a candle snaps. “Have any of your other parishioners had…accidents.”

“Oh, it has been a terrible few months. Death reaps and the Devil tries to claim the harvest,” the priest says and Mrs. Motts raises her eyes to the ceiling. “But I’ve made sure they’ve all gone to glory.”

Holy ground, Sam thinks, and absolution, so a suicide never happened.

A candle goes out with a curl of smoke and Sam says, “Were they having trouble? With anything?”

Mrs. Motts huffs a little behind her handkerchief. “If you’ll excuse me, Father, I’m makin’ a roast. Wouldn’t do to burn down the house.” She air-kisses his cheek and he smiles, near-sighted benevolence, as she totters out, twinkling until she disappears out the door.

“Trouble?” The priest focuses his widening smile on Sam. “Everyone has troubles.”

 

[xv.]

The priest is homespun, born in the parish, going to die in the parish, and he’s known these people since God was a boy. His mother raised him Catholic and his grandmother raised him on the evil eye, spin around thrice and spit to the four winds, throw salt over your left shoulder to hit the devil in the eye, grow clover and rosemary, never turn away visitors, and watch the moon, boy, watch the moon, the old silvery mistress may be fickle, but she knows.

Everyone has troubles, and Sam remembers Dean’s expression when the northern priest stood in the frilly bedroom of the young girl cracked of her heart and he asked _are you a believer_. He remembers the mirror and Dean’s expression, how it was like a wound they shared.

Are you a believer.

Sam thinks in a mantra, I believe in my brother.

Everyone has troubles, but the really bad ones, the ones people become desperate about, the priest sends those people and their troubles to the queen in the woods. She uses an old backwoods church, hidden out there by ash circles and offshoot roads. Her bloodline’s thick and redder than most, iron and copper and an otherworldly element that knows what the dead know, can hear things in the water and the wind, in the ground where the roots are deep.

“A queen,” Sam echoes and next to him, Dean raps knuckles on the wooden pew.

“A proper queen,” he corrects, and Sam’s once again dizzy, these things he doesn’t know, gaps he hasn’t filled, _I believe in my brother_.

The priest clicks his tongue. “Passed down. A female in every second generation.” Then he rubs fingers over his forehead and watches the candles. “But the troubles. Sorry, boys, sanctity of the confessional, can’t tell you what they said.”

“You can tell us what they wanted to ask her,” Dean says, leaning a little into Sam, and Sam tugs back his smile, rising pride and want for Dean.

“Well, when you put it that way,” the priest laughs, “guess that’d be alright.”

Martin Motts had gambled away almost everything. Beth Harper had cancer and a candlelit dinner was the only way to tell her poor ghostly Joe.

“What about Todd Laramie?” Dean says, rapping again, two times, third time’s a charm and Sam’s waiting for it, here in this holy place.

Another candle snaps, hisses and the priest looks confused. “The name doesn’t ring a bell.”

His name’s on a plaque, Sam thinks, left for posterity.

“How ‘bout Aguirre or Rawls?” he asks and the priest smiles, like he can’t see them, shakes his head.

“Don’t know ‘em,” the priest says, “but I hope they’re at peace.”

Dean nudges Sam, catches his eye, with a kind of irritated curl to his mouth and Sam thinks, I believe in my brother.

“Boudreaux,” he tries, and the priest tilts his head back a little.

“Yes, Boudreaux. He wanted. Well.”

Pursing his lips, Dean is trying to be patient, Sam can see it, but it’s only a phase, passing quickly like a noontime shower. “That’s a deep subject.” And the cadence he says it is just like their dad.

The priest smiles at that and shrugs, palms up, _what can I say._ “He wanted a new life.”

The church is alight in the dark as they leave, like the candles in their votives, and Dean says blackly, “Suicide.”

 

[xvi.]

The bar is dusky with smoke and the neon cuts through it like flashing knives.

“A fucking voodoo queen, Sam,” Dean says, grabbing a shot and he downs it, tequila sliding in droplets along his throat into the collar of his button-down, fingers fumbling for the second one even as he bangs the first glass onto the table.

But Sam’s not going to let him do this, not let him get split-headed drunk, because it’s not uncertainty, it’s not guilt on Dean’s part, a misplaced want after years of not having, Dean’s cut up over something else between the two of them.

So he steals the second shot and the third, shooting them one after another without taking a breath. Dean’s flat-eyed glaring at him and he curls a hand on Dean’s jaw, like a punch that hasn’t happened yet, saying, “What the hell is going on.”

“I dunno. Suicides. Knives. Snakes. A queen, Sam, a fucking _queen_ set up shop in the woods. So you tell me,” Dean says, pulling back, dragging his beer with him and randomly, Sam wants to take it from him, shatter the bottle, spray alcohol everywhere.

“No, I mean with you,” he says.

“What. I’ve always been this awesome.”

Sam sighs, exasperated, kicking Dean under the table when he tries to signal for another round. “You. The church. Didja get lost? What was that.”

“Uh, coincidence? And don’t start with ‘there’s no such thing,’ asshole. I was looking for that cafe. Y’know, where we had the chicory.”

“Okay, that answers that, but.”

Hands out, eyes wide, Dean shrugs. “But nothing.”

“No, man, that was _that_ ,” Sam says and Dean’s hands jitter, irritated.

“Glad we cleared up that ‘mystery,’ Velma.”

“Fuck, _no_ , what is going on with you. You’ve been here. C’mon, Dean, what happened. A queen?” It’s like a charm, like the word _suicide_ , if they throw it around enough, it won’t mean anything.

Dean licks his lips as he settles in the booth, kicks a foot up beside Sam. “It was a while ago.”

“Yeah, I kinda got that.”

They probably look like a couple of businessmen, down on their day, ready to chuck it out the window at a moment’s notice and Sam’s grateful they’ll never turn out that way, no matter how they got here or why, Dean sitting there with his jacket fallen open, his tie draped around his neck and it’s always gotten to Sam, his brother in a suit, pretending.

“Not sure you really wanna know.”

“I asked, didn’t I.”

“Yeah, but you always ask the dumbest questions.”

Sam fiddles with the label on his beer, peeling it slow with the condensation to help it along, and Dean tips his head back.

They drink like that, quiet, until the jukebox is between songs and Dean says, “Let’s get outta here.”

Pitch black outside, the air heavy, Dean’s fingers hooked in Sam’s belt loops, they’re not even buzzed and Dean pushes Sam against the car, still warm from the sun hours ago.

He kisses Sam and it’s not a fight, just a kiss pressed in close, again and again and again.

“It was a while ago, Sam.”

 

[xvii.]

The A/C is all dry, rusty air, but still isn’t cold.

They don’t wait, don’t turn on any lights, Sam trapped in his jacket as Dean bites up under his jaw.

Dean yanks back the comforter, a weird sort of material, and there’s static electricity, sparks in the dark, Sam breathless until he feels Dean’s palms on his ribs and he can see Dean’s eyes like the static electricity, sparks in the dark.

Kicking messily at the sheets, Sam’s sweating in the godforsaken heat, Dean too, pressed against all of Sam’s lines and then he’s drawing away.

The lamp clicks on yellow and dull and Dean’s mumbling, _gotta see you, Sammy, gotta see that it’s you, wanna see you, Sam,_ and Sam understands, needs this with his eyes wide open, because the first night they got here, he caught Dean staring in the mirror (no man’s land) with dark circles like bruises on his face, so Sam hid the candles and matches deeper in the trunk.

Dean, ready to give his heart for Sam, just another sacrifice to keep the sun rising.

Eyes wide open, watching each other. Sam drags his thumb across Dean’s mouth as they move in slick tandem, a slow possessive fuck, and Dean never looks away.

 

[xviii.]

“So, once.” Dean stops and sits up, pushing back against the headboard. “I went to a queen.”

Sam stares at the ceiling. He won’t say anything until Dean’s done and that’s the hardest part.

“You were in California. I was out on the road by myself; Dad had gone up north somewhere, tracking werewolves or something.”

Fumbling, Dean finds the remote, switches on the television and mutes the sudden blare. He flicks through the channels.

“Found these suicides over in Mississippi. They weren’t slitting their wrists. They were hanging themselves. Rope. Noose. Kicked-over chair. The whole shebang.”

A rope in his hands and a stool to stand on. Making a noose, seemed like an important skill to have.

“Fuck,” Dean says, fist pressing into the mattress. “Turns out it was a shapeshifter. But I couldn’t stop thinking. I wondered what it’d be like.” He strokes down his wrists again, over bruises like Sam’s fingerprints. “‘Cause, y’know, gonna die young, why not now.”

Sam’s so angry so fast, he has to bite his tongue, tang of blood in his mouth and then suddenly he’s thinking, I believe in my brother I believe in my brother I believe in my brother.

“But I couldn’t. ‘Cause. You had to be taken care of. I know you think it’s fucking insulting, but what the fuck ever. So I found this girl. Said she could help out. Her mistress would know what to do. _La reina._ Took me to a cemetery across the state line, to this grave with all these candles and dead wreaths and chicken feet tied with ribbons. Dried wax. Cat bones. Fish skeletons. Shed snake skins. You shoulda seen it.”

With a sigh, he flicks through a few more channels, Dean doing something to do it, so Sam waits until Dean turns off the television and slides back down the bed, rolling onto his stomach, but he doesn’t look at Sam.

“The girl left me there with a knife. Gave me instructions. The queen was six feet under, Sam, but the girl said, ‘Oh, she’ll help you, _caballero_ , she’ll tell you what you need to do. _La reina entiende._ ’” Dean’s voice lowers. “I’m standing there in the fucking middle of the night, with a knife, in a fucking cemetery and the girl tells me the damn dead queen understands.”

That’s fucking enough. Sam touches him, fingers curling around his arm, harder than he means to, and his brother shivers.

“Well, you’re here. And I’m still here,” Dean says, “so something worked.” He reaches out blindly and turns off the lamp.

In the dark, he doesn’t move again as Sam puts his mouth on Dean’s spine.

Are you a believer.

 

[xix.]

There’s a rope in his hands and Sam doesn’t have to think about it, his hands already know how to make the hangman’s noose. He’s got the noose and a stool to stand on. But then there’s a knife and the rope is thick, the knot hard to cut and he has to cut it because this isn’t only about death, it’s about the blood, let loose and warm.

It’s dark and he can hear water as he cuts at the noose, he can hear things slipping out of the water, along the ground. She’s in front of him, her red hair tangled, and those aren’t tattoos around her wrists. Bracelets of blood, black under the moonless sky. She says, Your brother’s desperate. He wants it more.

But you’ll do.

Sam.

“Oh shit, Sammy, wake up,” Dean says, shaking him hard and before his eyes have opened, Sam thinks he’s lost control of his body.

“Dean.”

“Yeah, yes, it’s me. You okay?”

“She said. She said you. You’re desperate. I was holding a knife. Fuck.”

Dean’s palm on his back, sticky and hot, and he’s saying, “Whoa, slow down. Take a breath.”

As soon as he does, as soon as his chest burns, Sam is tense, hollowed out because she’s wrong, she’s so fucking wrong. She’s got to be.

His brother doesn’t want to die, not like that.

You had to be taken care of, he remembers Dean saying, and this isn’t going to happen.

If they ever break, they’ll break the same, and it’ll be permanent, you never hear the bullet that kills you even if you’re the one pulling the trigger.

His pulse kicks hard in his veins and he pulls Dean down against him until he can feel Dean’s pulse in his blood.

 

[xx.]

“Dean, I saw her.”

Biting his lip like he’s thinking, Dean pulls on a pair of jeans. There are three bruises on his chest, shaped like Sam’s teeth, and Sam thinks, Not going anywhere, not without a fight.

“She came to you?”

You’ll do. Tangled red strands and blood on her wrists.

“Yeah. Maybe we’ve been made,” Sam says, shrugging, still naked on the bed dragged clean of its sheets.

“Maybe. But let’s keep asking around,” Dean says. “No point laying low now. ‘Sides, we don’t have a name. Unless she tried to cuddle up to you, you manly man.” He winks, so Sam flips him off before Dean disappears towards the bathroom with a lingering _fuck you too_ in the air and Sam runs his hands through his hair, trying to wake up.

“ _Holy fucking shit_.”

Sam’s off the bed, gun in hand, tripping to the bathroom as Dean backs out slowly.

A dark coil on the ugly green linoleum. Eyes like a doll, and the snake doesn’t move, infinite predator patience.  
“Almost fucking stepped on it.”

“Do I need to hide the damn knives?” Sam asks, joking, but it leaves a bitter taste in his mouth and Dean scowls.

“Like I’m that stupid. Or suicidal.”

An easy spill of words and Sam’s left speechless, but he shouldn’t be surprised, Dean pulls that shit all the time, has ever since Sam could talk, it’s almost as if he can’t help it, Dean and his bullshit like golden coins.

Dean points at the snake. “Sit. Stay. Roll over. Play dead.”

The tongue flicks out and the snake coils tighter, scales on the linoleum like a susurrus.

“Well, he doesn’t seem to _do_ anything, but I guess you can keep him.”

Sam laughs. “Yeah, he’s a pet.”

“Thought you always wanted a pet.” Dean smirks and Sam kisses him, biting, to teach him a lesson.

“He could guard the car. Sleep in the backseat.”

“Over my dead body, Sammy. Now shoot it already so I can brush my teeth and go get us some coffee.”

“I’m not gonna shoot it, yeah, let’s get kicked outta the motel for shooting a snake in the bathroom.”

“C’mon, scaredy cat, when in Rome.”

“I’m not shooting it.”

It takes the two of them with a pillowcase, a shovel and a lot of cussing to get the snake out of the room and Dean argues for taking it to the motel manager, demanding a refund, faking outrage in his suit and tie.

And when Dean comes back with the coffee, talking about how he scored Sam a free muffin by telling the girl behind the counter that he almost died this morning because of the snake in the bathroom, Sam thinks, Not going anywhere.

Not without a fight.

 

[xxi.]

Elias Aguirre lived alone and died alone and Dean says, “Hell, that’s depressing.”

They break into the house through the back door, after jumping the fence, and there’s nothing except the creak of the door and the smell of dust. An untidy neglected sunroom and then a door for the garage before the rest of the house branches off in a straight line.

The garage is what they came for, the place where Elias breathed his last.

But Elias’s garage is like any other garage.

Shelves along one wall, a messy tool bench, the smell of oil and gasoline, and a Harley, taken apart, its pieces laid carefully around it in a semi-circular fashion.

“Mechanic after my own heart,” Dean says, whistling, hand ghosting over shiny chrome.

“Yeah, you need to look more like a gay biker,” Sam says, Dean turned to glare at him.

Nothing much, old dark oil stains on the concrete and then two larger recent stains. Pools, collected from Elias’s wrists.

They head back into the house and Dean casts a last look at the Harley waiting to be put back together.

Hardly any pictures on the walls. A crucifix over the television. The place isn’t immaculate, but it’s orderly with just the detritus of one person strewn around in places, the kitchen sink, the table, the couch, the bathroom counter, the bed and armoire.

Stack of library books on the nightstand, all overdue by now, and Sam runs a finger down their spines.

Opening the small doors on the armoire, he discovers a candle in front of the mirror inside, the tall glass container painted with the Virgin in blue, her heart shining out, and a litter of burnt matches around her in sacrifice and obedience.

A rosary draped next to a cheap gold watch and not much else but the Virgin with her eyes modestly staring out into space as her heart burns. Ragged copy of the Lord’s Prayer taped to the mirror.

Dean traces around the rim of the glass and Sam knows he has to find out about the queen Dean went to, what he asked for. Because in the dark lost time when Sam was gone, whatever he asked for, it was difficult enough for Dean to put his belief in a ritual, however brief it lasted.

There’s nothing much left of Elias, not even skin mags in the armoire drawers or when Dean lifts the mattress, sighing between his teeth in disappointment.

“Dude, just because he didn’t have porn doesn’t mean he didn’t exist,” Sam says, frowning so he won’t crack a smile as they troop back down the hallway.

“Pretty damn close. Where’s the crappy VHS stash. I’d even settle for a nude calendar,” Dean says. “Victoria’s Secret catalog.” He pushes clothes around in the closet, like this is some movie and he’ll find a hollow wall hidden in there.

“All right, I get the picture,” Sam says. “You’re so keyed-up. Guess you need a little action. Help you relax.”

Surprised, Dean almost catches his fingers in the closet door. “Think that’s _my_ line.”

“At least you haven’t tried to use any of your lame-ass lines on me.”

Dean says, “That’s ‘cause you’re so damn easy, Sammy,” and his smirk is absolute challenge.

“Wanna try me?”

It should be macabre in some quickly moribund way, they’re in a dead man’s bedroom, challenging each other with this new crackling energy in the air, but nothing’s changed, they don’t have to sidestep what they see in each other’s eyes and Sam is so fucking grateful.

As he bends over to look under the bed, then forced down to kneeling because there’s something shoved to the middle, Dean whistles, murmurs, “Yeah, just like that, baby,” with a possessive hand on his shoulder, sliding into his hair and Sam will never, ever give this up.

“That how you like it? Got something for you,” he says, dragging what appears to be a trunk out for inspection and Dean says, “Fucking tease.”

Candles, incense, bags of gris-gris, tiny boxes of powders and various other objects Sam can’t identify because suddenly, Dean’s slamming it shut, “Don’t touch it, Sam, step back.”

Then there’s a sound from the ceiling and he’s trailing Dean into the hallway, gun drawn, like every daydream and nightmare.

The attic.

The door is in the sunroom ceiling and there’s ash on the carpet, almost the same color as the carpet, a dirty dark gray, how did they miss it. Sam opens the door, pulling down the stairs and when he crawls up, looks inside, he sighs and says, “Dean.”

 

[xxii.]

They have to make sure not to touch anything.

It’s not theirs, it’s not for them, and anything that’s for a blessing for someone else can turn into a curse for them. If it’s not for you, then it’s not for anyone else.

Built up and spilling all over an antique dresser, it’s an altar, no, Sam tilts his head and reassesses, it’s a shrine.

Everyone builds shrines, he shouldn’t be surprised, but this one is honest and startlingly open, almost brutal in its belief and faith. Melted candles, their wax runoffs mixing in a jumble of colors, reds and blacks and whites and blues, and the mirror is so old, the silver is warped. Probably a family heirloom handed down through the damp years, never leaving the state. Ribbons tied around herbs and plants, the leaves withered and brown, and if they breathe too hard, it might all blow away. Laminated pictures of saints, their eyes turned heavenward or half-closed in agony or ecstasy, lights around their heads, blood flowing from their holy wounds. Each picture is a burning heart of sacrifice and Sam echoes his brother, “Don’t touch it, keep back.”

Small bones are scattered over the water-stained wood and the skull of a cat hisses silent at them from one corner. Carbon streaks of ash and broken matches, dark dried drops that could be blood or oil, and the wicks on the glass hurricane lamps are turned up high, as if Elias expected a storm any second.

There’s so much stuff, so many objects and incense sticks, tiny piles of black dirt and feathers, as if faith layered on faith layered on faith.

It’s all so worn and used, time and time and time again, and there are pictures of people, family, friends; some have names printed over their heads, their mouths open with laughter or happy words, curling and old, stuck in the mirror’s frame and Sam’s knows they’re memories, not recent events. Elias was alone with these and nothing else. Except the empty bottles, fifths of vodka, bourbon, whiskey, Elias drank to his memories, time and time and time again.

At the top of the mirror is another saint, benevolent with his sunshine halo, and Dean says, “Saint Anthony.”

Sam scuffs to a stop. “How do you —“

But Dean doesn’t listen, says, “Patron saint of the lost.”

“Dean, where did —“

“Hey, Sammy, is this the girl of your dreams?” Dean asks, still not listening or sidestepping Sam’s own questions. He gestures carefully to a girl with black hair skimming her shoulders, her eyes serious, but her mouth smiling at the camera. She making a motion at the woods behind her, at a slice of a squat white building guarded by trees almost out of frame.

Over her head is scrawled the name “Laurel Rawls.”

“Shit, _Rawls_ ,” Sam says and Dean nods, eyes narrowed like he’s solved something, served it up on a silver platter. “But no, that’s not her. She has red hair. And tattoos.”

“A tattooed redhead, nice, Sammy, guess you’re moving up in the world,” Dean says, kind of blank and all the energy from downstairs is gone, broken and dispersed as if nothing ever happened. He heads down the rickety stairs, leaving Sam with the shrine of faith that Elias had held onto for dear life.

If all he had was pictures of Dean, he’d crawl into a bottle too, make the car into the Winchester shrine, like he’s threatened in the past, drunk and miserable, lonely with his brother beside him, back before, in another time Sam’s trying to forget.

 

[xxiii.]

He’s not going to ask, at least not now, he’s not going to ask about St. Anthony and Dean and how the two know each other, because he has his suspicions and he doesn’t really like them.

Dean drives without really paying attention, whistling, glancing at street signs. Boudreaux was in the phone book and so was Rawls and Dean had clicked his tongue, “Death and taxes, my man, death and taxes, can’t reprint the phone book every damn day.”

St. Anthony and Dean and his expression in the church, surrounded by candles like he was set on fire.

The thing is, Sam prays. He does. But he hasn’t prayed in the last few weeks, ever since he kissed Dean and against all odds, Dean kissed him back. He’s not ashamed and he’s not feeling guilty, he just hasn’t prayed because the weather was fair, the road was empty and Dean kept smiling from behind the wheel.

But Dean’s still skittish, still uncertain and unsure, as if he only gets this because he didn’t commit suicide so many years ago, because he didn’t let his curiosity get the better of him. As if something’s going to change Sam’s mind, one day he won’t want eggs for breakfast anymore, one day he won’t want Dean.

He clears his throat and Dean switches from whistling to humming under his breath, taking a corner too sharply.

All these people and their troubles, they all wanted something just outside their reach, and Sam wonders how this is going to end.

The thing is, Sam prays.

 

[xxiv.]

The Boudreaux mansion isn’t really a mansion, but it’s big enough in this parish to be a mansion. Randy was a used car salesman and liked photographs of big fish and fast boats and his wife in white bikinis. She sees them in their suits and starts sobbing in a handkerchief almost the moment she opens the door.

Young, brunette, dressed completely in white, and her mascara doesn’t run, but she’s a mess otherwise, as they introduce themselves.

“Are you Mrs. Boudreaux?” Sam asks carefully and she hiccups, says, “Yes, I’m Bonnie. Bonnie Boudreaux.” Then she sniffles, and says, “Lemonade?”

She almost drops the glasses, then the pitcher, until Dean comes to her rescue, making concerned we’re-with-a-crazy-person faces behind her back and Sam’s face hurts from glaring.

“I came in to buy a car and it was love at first sight,” she sputters finally around a swig of lemonade. “That Mazda was the prettiest thing I’d ever laid eyes on.”

Dean’s eyebrow arches, purely sardonic; Sam shakes his head, _crying woman in their midst_ , relieved that the Widow Boudreaux misses it completely.

“Mrs. Boudreaux, did you know your husband was seeing someone else?” he asks, hand itching to smack Dean.

She wails afresh and Dean shakes his head back, _look what you did now, genius_ and Sam stifles a sigh.

“No, I didn’t – I had no idea – well, I mean, I had found a tube of lipstick in the car, Randy’s car, that is, the blue Buick out front,” she says, waving a delicate hand, sparkling with stones, “I’d never wear a shade that _red_. And sometimes he’d smell of this perfume, made me sneeze.” Digging a flask out of a drawer and unscrewing the cap, she pours a generous amount of what looks like whiskey into her glass of lemonade and says, “Reminded me of college.”

“College?” Dean says because Bonnie Boudreaux looks old enough to barely be in college, much less talking about it in the past tense.

“Yes, like, one of my roommates, she used to light incense all the time. To cover up the weed.”

Dean grins, lightning-fast, and Sam tugs on his tie to keep his expression clear.

They ask a few other cursory questions because she’s staring up at them like she’s miserable and simply wants to go back to spiking her lemonade in peace; no, they weren’t having any financial troubles that she knew of; yes, the dealership was going well, but the new one was struggling a little, Randy said so; no, they didn’t have their boat anymore, they’d had to sell it, the times bein’ like they are; no, I didn’t know who that little tart was in bed with my husband and I hope like hell she gets what she deserves.

Then Sam said, “One last thing, Mrs. Boudreaux, and this might sound a little strange, but was there a snake in the house?”

She looks at him like he really has become part sasquatch, as if Dean’s been right all these years, but Dean licks his lips, jumps in with a quick, “We saw something on the report, wanted to follow up with animal control. Paperwork and all. Sometimes they get busy with the…wildlife and forget.”

It’s weak, it’s lame and it’s certainly not Dean’s best performance to date, not even close, but he changes his stance to open and authoritative, like he absolutely knows what he’s talking about, ma’am, we’re here for the facts.

Her dark hair falls around her flushed cheeks as Bonnie nods, slowly, recalling. “Yes, yes, there was a snake, but I didn’t find it. I think one of the guys who came to get Randy and – and – whatever her name was, one of those paramedic guys was almost bitten. Or struck. Do snakes bite or strike?”

She sniffles again, as if she’s thinking about crying or thinking about the answer to her question, then she says, “Is that all? I hope I’ve helped you with your paperwork.”

“Oh, uh, yes, ma’am. Thank you. We’re sorry to have disturbed you,” Sam reassures her as she ushers them to the door and on cue, as if she was given permission, Bonnie Boudreaux bursts into tears again.

When the door closes, Dean exhales hard and he looks like he’s sweating, though the A/C was working fine in Chez Boudreaux and Sam wants to laugh, the witness wearing out his brother, like this is the most dangerous part of the job.

“I don’t know if any of that was real or fake, but I’ve _never_ seen a woman cry so much,” Dean says, climbing into the car, “’cepting maybe you.”

“”Cause you’re an asshole. And I’m not a woman.”

Dean waves his hand in a so-so motion and it still amazes Sam, kicks him right in the chest that he knows exactly what Dean means when he’s not talking, _you’re mostly woman_ and Dean follows that up with, “Close enough for government work,” to hammer the point home.

“Yeah, I’ve cried before. I was _six_. You _made me drop my ice cream_ –“

“But I bought you a comic book to shut you up –“

“And then _you stole it from me_. That is what you’re referring to?” Sam scowls as he rolls down his window, signaling he’d rather deal with the heat than deal with Dean.

“You cried when you were a baby. And when you were two, and three, and four, and five, and –“

“Just shut up and drive. You have no evidence, no proof.”

“My hard-earned patience, putting up with you, ” Dean says good-naturedly, stomping on the gas and squealing out into the road, like the impatient bastard Sam knows he is.

 

[xxv.]

The Rawls house is easier because no one’s home; the next door neighbor out in her yard watering her drooping flowers tells them the other Rawls girl is at work, she’s sure to get home around six, though sometimes she goes out drinking, ever since her sister passed, God rest her soul.

Dean wiggles his eyebrows at the thought of another Rawls girl, but Sam ignores him, ignores the regular sting of jealousy somewhere around his sternum.

They thank the neighbor with her large-brimmed straw hat, or rather Sam thanks her, allaying her fears about strange men in her neighborhood as Dean digs an elbow into his ribs, nudging, a sort of _hurry it up, Romeo, we’ve got a house to break into_ and somehow Sam stays polite as he fends off his brother.

It’s nothing short of a miracle.

But then again, and it would kill Sam to say it out loud, every day with Dean is nothing short of a miracle.

Especially with how the two of them have to inconspicuously sneak around to the back yard, fighting their way through this southern country’s sprawling plants and trees, to climb over the fence in their suits and dress shoes.

There’s streaks of dirt on their toes of their shoes and Sam’s got some sort of blossoms in his hair and Dean’s muttering, “Suicides, man, making me break into houses all the damn time.”

And he’s really disgruntled, but his eyes light up a little when he pulls out his lockpick set and Sam sees him again when Dean was sixteen, teaching Sam all about the “fine art of the B&E, Sammich, it’s an art, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise,” and he thought at the time that Dean called it B&E to sound like he was in the know, some secret organization of crooks and thieves and they were going to be part of it, those wild cowboy outlaws who make their own rules. His brother looks so young, tongue caught in his teeth, one eye screwed closed as he jimmies the lock and there’s an absolute moment where Sam doesn’t give a shit anymore, he doesn’t care Dean was suicidal once upon a time, that Dean knows about the patron saint of the lost and the taste of chicory and how much _la reina muerta_ understands. It doesn’t matter, none of it matters, not with Dean cracking open a door by touch, and Sam is thrust back into being a little brother, all his hero-worship coming back in such a thrumming rush he almost falls over. He needs his brother in every possible way and he can’t breathe in the humidity, clothes sticking to him, then the door clicks open, Dean squinting up at him, pleased as punch, “Stand back, you’re looking at a master.”

“Master idiot,” Sam says, hoping he doesn’t sound breathless, but Dean doesn’t seem to notice as he peers around the door to make sure the coast is clear, “Weak, dude, that was weak, I taught you better.”

The air inside the house is odd, crackling, an unsettling feeling that has Sam making fists and when he turns to locate his brother, Dean’s eyes are wide, lamp-like again, green glass votives, as if he’s on fire, like the church and Sam thinks, Believer.

“Y’know, we could just wait until the sister comes home,” Sam hears himself say in the soupy air, thick with snapping potential and it smells like ozone, like sage, lightning-struck and heavy. Dean shakes his head, then shakes it again and wipes his palms on his pants.

“Nah, quick look ‘round. We can hit up the sister later,” he says, but he sounds far away and Sam’s starting to worry.

Normal family home, “it’s just her and her sister, I mean, _was_ , I still can’t believe what it said in the paper,” the neighbor telling them not ten minutes ago, and the place is neat in a feminine way, curtains and framed landscape photography on the walls and nice furniture with floral-printed quilts. All the rooms are sunny somehow and the bedrooms are pink and purple, with signs on the doors like a sorority house, Laurel and Cassidy, dots on the letters and hearts in the corners.

A disconcerting mixture, the fizzle of power and the lighthearted girlishness and Sam’s ready to leave, get gone; a tube of red lipstick left open on the bathroom counter and that’s enough, they’ve found Laurel Rawls after her suicide, another tragedy they’ve met after the fact.

It’s all messing with his head and he snags Dean by the sleeve as they wander around upstairs, but Dean doesn’t say anything, get off me, octopus, what you scared, he doesn’t say a word and they search like they’re chained together.

Until they’re passing back by the stairs and Sam gets a good look at one of the photographs in its knotted-wood frame and Dean slips out of his grasp.

A squat white building guarded by trees.

Black-and-white, and the blacks are deep, pressed back into the shadows of the woods, how the trees huddle together, the whites crisp and frank in the paint on the building which slants in on itself, holding itself up. Big double doors, and the old cross hanging above them is black in the photo, the only thing on the building without crooked lines. The porch sags with age and the tolls of the swampy land and on the steps sits a woman in a long dress, her face turned away, blur of motion. Her hair is shoulder-length and dark, her hands thrust out towards the camera to block the picture.

A circle rings the church, sandy ash on dark, leafy soil.

A backwoods church with its ash and forgotten hiding place.

“Sammy,” Dean calls from downstairs, his voice pulled thin. “Sam.”

He sounds almost worse than when he found the snake in the bathroom, just about under his feet, there’s a verse for that, Sam can almost hear it in his ears, _he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel_ , but then Dean says his name again as he hurries to the kitchen.

Hands on his hips, pushing his jacket back and away like wings, Dean frowns at the fridge and Sam can read his tired irritation.

“What.”

Dean nods, indicating the a picture on the fridge door. His eyes are still glassy, and he says, “Redhead, tattoos.”

Sam chokes because he’s dragged back into the dark, with the water swirling somewhere, waiting to take him to its animal depths, he can hear it and she’s walking towards him with her wrists dripping blood, her grin as wide as the knife in her hands, Your brother’s desperate for it.

But you’ll do.

He’s choking on his own spit. He’s not giving up without a fight, no way in hell.

A laughing girl has her arms thrown around Laurel Rawls, long curly red hair mixing with Laurel’s black hair, her wrists dangling at Laurel’s neck and the bands of her tattoos are stark in the photo.

The resemblance is unmistakable. Same nose, same smile, they even seem to laugh the same.

Sisters.

 

[xxvi.]

“The padre lied to us,” Dean says, smacking the steering wheel, then he jerks at his tie until it slides shushing from underneath his collar. “Think the Church looks down on that.”

Sam absentmindedly winds his own tie around his fingers, winds unwinds winds unwinds, and he’s thinking something’s not right, something doesn’t fit, all the power loose in the house, like too-young pets left to run around unchecked and claw at the furniture.

“No, I don’t think he lied,” Sam says and he frowns back at Dean’s mumbled _yeah, right_ , “I mean, really, maybe he doesn’t know her by Rawls.”

"What, like a priestess alias?" Dean scoffs and this time, he wads up his tie and chucks it at Sam. "I guess it doesn't have that ring to it, 'Hi, I'm Laurel, I'll be your queen this evenin'."

With the window open at his elbow, Sam sticks his hand out in the warm wind the car makes, cutting a path through the humidity. “So you think it was Laurel.”

“You said it looked like her in the picture. The girl at the church off in the woods.”

“But she’s dead, remember. Snakes and suicides, your current favorites, Dean. And her sister’s the girl in my dreams.”

Dean hmms in the back of his throat.

“Something fishy’s going on.”

“ _Fishy_?” Sam asks, incredulous and he cracks up, laughs harder than he has in a long while and it shakes something free, rattling in his ribs. “Uh, jinkies?”

They go through an intersection, Dean ignoring the stop sign, turning away, but he’s not quick enough, Sam sees his mouth curve up in a smile. So he pushes his luck. “Guess it’s time to trade the ol’ girl in. We could get a van. More room for the guns. We could paint it green and blue. With flowers on the sides. And we could name it, you like naming things. How ‘bout The Mystery –“

“Oh good God, Sam, would you _shut up_. Yeah, it’s Old Man Peterson, out at the haunted mill, selling weed to the unsuspecting good teenagers of this fine town.”

“Parish. Meddlin’ kids.”

“Y’know what that means, dontcha, Sam?” Dean says. He seems to have forgotten he’s annoyed, he’s not supposed to be smiling at Sam, but he is smiling at Sam to beat the band and Sam wants to kick back with a cold beer and a movie with explosions, he’s won today’s round, the champion of the day.

“Y’know what that means,” Dean says again.

Sam shrugs, feeling easy and loose-limbed, letting the heat sink into his bones. “What.”

Dean hmms, scratchy back of his throat, but doesn’t look at Sam and his fingers tighten around the steering wheel. The sunshine in Sam’s headspace is swallowed up, an omen-eclipse on the brightest day and he says, “What.”

“Bait.”

 

[xxvii.]

He’s not letting Dean do it. Not at all. There’s no argument here, no coin toss, no best two out of three, no rock-paper-scissors, none of that shit. It’s not going to work, it’s not an option and it doesn’t even need to be discussed.

Last time, Dean was bait and it wasn’t the monster out of the mirror that frightened Sam, all silver razor-needle fury, ready to slice Dean to ribbons, that didn’t scare him in the slightest.

It was Dean himself, ready to be some sacrifice so Sam could live some so-called fantasy happy life, out of the long shadow of the car, the guns, his big brother. He’s never been afraid of Dean and he never will be, but he was so scared of what Dean was doing, willing and able to cut his own heart out and give it to Sam if that’s what Sam wanted.

He’s always hated it when Dean played bait in the past because what if Sam’s shot went wide, what if his sweaty palms slipped, what if he wasn’t fast enough, what if he did get there and it all went to hell in a pretty little handbasket, what if he did something, what if he didn’t do something, what if what if _what if_.

When Sam was fourteen, he took his first turn as bait, his dad’s expression completely apprehensive about the whole thing and Dean ragging on him the whole drive out to the monster’s feeding ground, “’bout time you manned the hell up, Sammy, it’ll put hair on your chest.” Dean, trying to shake him out of his fear, making him forget for a moment what they were about to do, how Sam was going to stand around, defenseless and vulnerable, a nice young tender thing ringing the dinner bell for supper.

He did it and he didn’t hate it and he fell in love. He stood his ground as the monster charged him, snarling fangs and claws, and he knew down to his core Dean wouldn’t let anything happen to him. Sure enough, his big brother charged out to meet that fucking monster, to do battle for Sam’s life and the winner was already decided when the bullet left Dean’s gun. Sam fell in love with his brother, this gun-toting, reckless, dangerous version of him. He wanted to be complicit in some crime with his brother, the two of them with shotguns on their shoulders and the fight in their fists and on nights like those, Sam realized he could take on the world because their names ran together, SamandDean. Years later, he finally figured out why his stomach dropped around Dean, why he got so anxious and antsy and defensive, and Sam was a lawbreaker, a word that began with an ‘I’.

He’d rather be bait than let Dean do it, ever, because seeing Dean standing there, waiting, sometimes yelling into the sky, _let’s dance, you fucker, you bite me and I’ll bite you back_ with his arms thrown wide, it broke something in Sam, his brother inviting trouble, summoning it to him like a long-lost possession, and his unassailability was just an open challenge to the creatures that moved in the dark.

Something would take Dean down and Sam didn’t want to see it, bear witness to Dean’s blood spilling warm and red. It had nothing to do with fallen heroes and the end of a dream era; it had everything to do with Sam losing his brother and not being able to do a fucking thing about it.

Over the years, it’d gone both ways: Sam can tell stories of broken bones, thick stitches when he was bait and he knows Dean’s stories by heart.

Stupidly, he knows the whole bait fight is always about protecting someone and he still steps into the ring to duke it out because Dean can protect him, but he can also protect Dean now.

You’re scrawny, kiddo, but you scrap like no one I’ve ever seen, Dean said, bleeding from the nose, when Sam was twelve and finally understanding the mechanics of a fight. You fight dirty, like I do, Dean said, proud, as blood ran over his lips.

Stupidly, Sam knows all of this and he will still get into the same battle they’ve been fighting for years.

You don’t protect your left. You leave yourself open on your left.

The left is where Sam’s heart is, so he overcompensates.

“ _I’m_ doing it, Dean, whether you fucking like it or not, because, last time, don’t you remember, _last time_ you thought I was gonna take one look in that fucking mirror and leave.“

And just like that, the battle’s done. Dean’s eyes are defiant, cold in the settling dust, like retreating signal fires.

 

[xxviii.]

Dean flips through the channels quicker than he can really see them, just another sign of his anger at the situation and Sam sits in a chair, elbows on his knees, rocking on the chair’s uneven legs, watching his brother be angry.

He can’t wander up to this girl, queen or not, and ask for just anything. A pony, Dean said, Fort Knox, a bevy of naked women, all the pie you can eat, Dean said before he sneered and shut down and started staring at the television.

Martin Motts wanted money, a way out of his current financial situation, probably enough money to buy his wife some more charms for her bracelet and keep them in a regular supply of towels with teapots on them. Accustomed to that lifestyle.

They don’t know for certain about Beth Harper, since the Ghost of Poor Joe wouldn’t let them past the door, and honestly, Sam’s surprised at how many people let them past the door, don’t shoot them on sight; but hers was possibly a request for her future, remission of cancer and an extension on life for her and Joe. Or maybe she actually committed suicide, Sam can’t decide, quiet Beth Harper won’t let him.

All-star running back Todd Laramie, with the cheerleaders and the trophies and the proudest mom in the parish. Sam remembers kids like that, from other schools, from the ones who tried to pick on him and Dean. Glory, the adrenaline high of knowing you’re amazing at something and you don’t even have to try. Blazing through life like gasoline on fire and later, you can look back and see where you’ve been. Or he wanted a football scholarship and way out of this small backwoods town, like every other human interest story come before. And Sam can relate to it all; he can see where he’s been, he’s staring at it as Dean’s face flickers with the TV’s light; it’s hard to get out of anything you know as well as your own skin, though now, now he’s working so hard to _stay_.

Aguirre had memories and alcohol and maybe he wanted to outrun them both.

Boudreaux had a business possibly tanking, a young wife who blindly adored him and a taste for something else, maybe the fast and shiny, maybe the darker side of things. Human nature: he was trying to get out too, get away and start over.

But Laurel Rawls. She’s a sticking point, the variable in the equation; who knows what she wanted? Perhaps the same thing that makes people who have everything simply pack up and walk out the door and not look back.

Sam knows a little something about that too. He sighs, runs his hands through his hair.

The funny thing is, Sam already knows what he wants to ask for, which is one part stupid, as if this was a wishing well, and one part insane because he’ll actually have to say it.

 

[xxix.]

Running a hand over his mouth, Dean mumbles, “Chicory,” but he finds his way back to the church as if he has the route memorized. When he throws the car in park, he scrubs his thumbs on his jeans and Sam lets himself watch the movement, back and forth back and forth.

“Don’t tell him your life story, man, just give him the ol’ sob story and let’s get going,” Dean says. Sam nods and for some reason, his breath is caught in his throat, painful, so he might make a hurt noise as he nods again.

“What,” Dean says nonchalantly, hand going to the back of his neck, like he’s nervous, Sam making him nervous.

“Uh, nothing,” Sam says, “promise I won’t get trapped in confession.” He finds the door handle and next to him, Dean huffs, laughter under his breath.

“Yeah, I don’t think the padre’d be none too pleased to hear about all our years of grave desecration.”

The best way to shake Dean out of something is to ambush him, really shake him up and let the chips fall where they may. Sam grabs him by his collar and pulls him close, Dean’s jaw clenching at Sam’s touch and his fingers find Sam’s shoulders like they’re about to get into a fistfight right there in the car.

“Actually, I thought I might tell him about you and me, make the ol’ sob story believable,” Sam says before kissing him, deep and dark like all the nights they’ve spent here. Then, ignoring any of Dean’s possible reactions, he lets go, climbs out of the car and walks into the church.

 

[xxx.]

The priest smiles at Sam and shakes his hand. “Nice to see you again, young man. Is there anything else you needed to know about Martin? Any of those other poor people?”

Sam does his best nervous impression, though it’s not hard to pretend. “I, uh, was wondering.” A door closes somewhere, the sound echoing in the nave and the priest clasps his hands together.

“However I can help.” His smile doesn’t slip, doesn’t move, the same near-sighted kindness Sam remembers from earlier and it contrasts so differently with the northern priest, who eyed him like someone who’d seen more and knew more than he was saying.

“Yeah, I’ve, uh, troubles, you mentioned troubles the first time we were here. You said you knew someone that I could see. About. Troubles.” Sam shifts his weight, as if he’s guilty, but hasn’t committed murder.

Like he’s coming to a big decision, the priest nods, slowly. “I see, son, I see. I won’t dig too deep, a’cause like I told you –“

“Everyone has troubles,” Sam interrupts, pushing a thread of agitation into his voice and the priest nods again, waving away Sam’s rudeness.

“Does it have to do with the young man? Your partner? The other rookie?”

It shouldn’t surprise Sam he’s asking about Dean; people seem to look at them and see assumptions everywhere, not that they’re wrong, but not that they’re right because there’s really nothing Sam can say that comes remotely close to explaining him and Dean.

The priest is blinks patiently, waiting for his answer and inexplicably, Sam remembers sitting across from a well-meaning guidance counselor, _you could send these grades anywhere, Sam, you could go anywhere and do anything you wanted_.

He stammers, “I. Yeah. Yes, it does.” And he thinks he should get out fast, say something to get the priest on his side, “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t’ve disturbed you, this isn’t what I –“

“Everyone. Has troubles,” the priest cuts him off, a hand in the air. “Got a pen and paper? There are…specific instructions. I’ll have to draw you a map.”

His handwriting is messy and sprawling, more like a doctor than a priest, but he explains things to Sam, in a hushed tone and maybe they have stumbled into a confessional, the priest giving him a list of ingredients, and head out of town, go past the highway sign, turn right and it looks like you might drive right into the trees, but just keep going, and soon, son, soon your troubles will be gone, you won’t have to worry anymore.

As Sam turns to leave, he sees a flip of a coat almost snagged by the church doors.

Dean didn’t stay in the car.

 

[xxxi.]

“Honestly, sometimes I can’t believe you’re real,” Dean grumbled twenty minutes ago and that’s all they’ve said to each other.

Sadly, the priest didn’t know it, but the short list of ingredients isn’t a problem; they have each item in the trunk and Sam can’t help it, he laughs to himself, isn’t that just the way.

The road on this side of town is old and worn, the asphalt thinning in places, and the highway sign creeps up like foreshadowing. The grasses are thick, almost hiding a dirt road cutting into the trees.

The underside of the car creaks a little and Dean’s glaring like he wishes he’d gotten the machete from the trunk to clear away this jungle, so Sam points out, “Swampland,” and Dean stops.

“That’s it. We’re hoofin’ it from here.”

“What about a quick getaway.”

Finally, Dean looks at Sam, his brother on lockdown, shut in safe, and says, “Why, what’re you gonna ask her that we might need a quick getaway.”

Sam sighs and shakes his head. “Never mind, man, just taking precautions.”

“Yeah, take your precautions and –“

“Open the trunk and shut your mouth.”

Sam’s a little startled when Dean does both without so much as an obscene hand gesture, but the day is swiftly bending around them, a taut bear-trap of a day, like it could snap, it could go so fucking wrong with a single step.

The priest’s instructions require a small bag, like gris-gris, and Dean won’t let Sam make it, as if he can stop whatever’s coming by keeping Sam out of the bullseye. If it’s not for you, it’s not for anybody else. In retaliation, Sam grounds himself in Dean, touching his brother as much as he can get away with, fingers on his neck, along his back where his shirt rides up, along his side as Dean hands him a candle.

They have to wait until sundown, of course, because you need the dark all around you to cover your stupid mistakes, like when you bet your life and the odds are against you.

The thing is, Sam prays.

 

[xxxii.]

Sam walks out of the trees at dusk. He’s stepped into the black-and-white photograph, somehow fallen through into this underground world. The trees soak in the blacks of the growing night, the church almost glowing, faint, white and peeling. The cross hangs, as firm and old as the nails holding it.

There are no animal noises, no birds. Water, as if the swamp is right there, a river flowing from under and around the church.

She’s sitting on the steps, like her sister in the picture, barefoot, her long white dress dirty up to her knees. A fire crackles in a ring of stones and ashes between her and Sam.

She loosens her hair with an easy palm, her tattoos like bracelets as she stands and saunters towards him, her hips swaying. A dull flicker from the knife in her hand and she smiles, as if she’s got all night to dance.

And then Sam can smell it as she walks closer, that heady scent of power, leaden and lingering like after a brushfire.

“You’re not a believer,” she says, her voice young in the heat.

“Depends on what you’re asking me to believe in,” Sam says. He says it loud enough so Dean can hear him, tucked away invisible in the trees. It’s a call-and-answer, just like last time, in New England.

Nodding, her hair lights up with the flares from the fire, so much red in the night swamp.

Something’s off, something’s wrong, Dean in his head, _something’s fishy_ , and no shit, this isn’t what he pictured when he thinks of _la reina_. Her smile is sharp like a shard, something she’s found broken on the ground. This smile doesn’t match her sister’s.

The fire twists in a small breeze and she licks her lips, bored. “You have something to ask.”

Sam nods, finds himself squaring off for a fight.

“So ask.” Turning, she spits into the fire, three times. “Ask.”

He knows what he’s supposed to say; Dean wanted him to be lovesick and heartbroken, the usual desperation story, there’s this girl, I see her every day, she doesn’t know I exist and I just want her to love me.

But he knows his brother and he knows his brother can be an asshole.

So he says what he wants.

“I want my brother to see me. Us.” Immediately, Sam’s hands are shaking and the night is caving in on him, his ribs folding, collapsing in his chest and the power is winding around his heart like a snakebite. _Entiende_. “Whatever’s between us. I need him to understand.”

It’s a truth he decided on instead of ponies, Fort Knox, discovering where their father has gone to ground in these United States.

“Y’know, your brother’s desperate for it. He wants it more,” she says and Sam’s vision is breaking at the edges because this is his dream, the knife in her hands, and how she smiles when she talks as if she knows Dean. “But you came to me first. You’ll do.”

“Stop,” he says. “Stop.”

She glares at him. “No. You came here of your own free will. Believer or not. You’ve got your juju. And the candle. I think you’re committed now, cowboy.” Reaching down, she finds a length of rope and cuts it with her knife, handing the rough fraying piece to him.

He’s playing a role, playing bait, holding himself defenseless and vulnerable, but he’s slipping under, following her instructions. He lights the candle, feeding it drops of his blood and she has to stand on tiptoe to smear a line of blood or oil on his forehead, whispering to him, a mixture of words he can’t follow.

He’s slipping under, slipping sideways, and he hopes like hell Dean stays quiet and out of sight.

By the end, her eyes look black and her teeth are bared. She holds out her palms, covered with dirt and says, “You’ll do. Even for a non-believer.”

Suddenly, Sam’s walking down the road, hearing animals in the dark and Dean appears in front of him, gun drawn on him as if he’s about to demand payment.

“What the _fuck_ ,” he says, grabbing Sam by the elbow and it hurts so much.

Her eyes looked so fucking black.

 

[xxxiii.]

Suicides. Déjà vu all over again.

His brother might be pushing for death by fiery car crash, a way Sam has always thought would probably be too good for them, almost up there with dying in their sleep; Dean swerves out onto the road and races the yellow lines, swinging them back into town faster than the tires can take, screeching like wild animals.

But Dean doesn’t say anything to him, won’t look at him, just pulls into a convenience store parking lot. Sam’s eyes hurt, the lights overly-bright on his retinas and between blinks, he can only watch as Dean gets out of the car, slams his way into the store and whirls back to the car with a sixer and a bottle of Jack in his hands.

“Dean.”

“Not yet.”

Which means Dean needs alcohol in his system for whatever happened at the church in the woods, whatever he thought he saw or heard and Sam doesn’t know what to do now.

All your troubles will be over.

In the dank of the woods, with the church standing witness, the girl, Cassidy Rawls, told him Dean was desperate. But not for death, like Sam thought, not for a mirror of suicide he wanted to curiously crawl into and see what was on the other side. Not completely.

He knows now, he sees the twist in her words because Sam didn’t go to her first for answers.

Dean did, to the dead queen, so many years ago.

Dean’s desperate, and somehow, it’s Sam’s fault.

When they get to the motel, Sam hauls himself out, grabbing the bottle of Jack for himself because sometimes Dean has a good idea. He sits on the edge of their bed, taking the first shot from the bottle, letting it burn all the way through him as Dean paces a few steps before stealing the bottle from him.

One drink, two, and Dean won’t look at him. “Why’d you say that.”

“Stupidity?” Sam asks, getting the Jack away from Dean on his return pass. Two is the magic number here, burning better than one, and when he can breathe around the alcohol, he shrugs. “Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“Do you even… _know_ ,” Dean says, stops, slicing his sentence off with a swipe of his hand.

“No, Dean, I don’t because you won’t fucking tell me.” The liquor sloshes as Sam tilts and drinks one long swallow and maybe he’ll just turn to ash.

“What’s there to fucking tell,” Dean says, giving up on the Jack and popping the cap off a beer with his ring. Sam has been jealous of that, for years and years, how Dean can do something, one little movement, one little smile, one single moment of grace and Sam will want to go to his knees in awe, his brother some overwhelming force.

“Plenty. You know why I said what I said. Ever since New England, you don’t trust this. This thing. This _us_. You think I’m gonna just up and –“

“Oh, believe me, I heard you, loud and clear.” Dean’s eyes glint and he looks like he’s about to throw his beer bottle at the wall just to have it break. “I heard you. And I do know, Sam, I know a helluva lot more about it than you do.”

“Oh yeah? Since when? Please enlighten me, Dean, since you don’t seem to want to share with the rest of the class.”

But Dean looks ready for violence and Sam’s okay with violence, he’s grown up with it, it’s his friend, almost his brother, just as much as Dean is.

Then Dean hesitates. Sam’s ready to snap. The bottle tilts in his grasp, alcohol spilling on his jeans and thank fuck he doesn’t have any matches in reach, he might set the whole place on fire.

“St. Anthony, Dean? The queen you went to see, by your fucking self? Sound familiar? Tell me, what the hell did _you_ ask for.”

He’s on his feet, dizzy, his finger bleeding again from where he pricked it for the ritual in the woods, he can smell the smear across his forehead and with Dean’s gaze, there’s the snakebite, aimed at his heart.

“St. Anthony,” he repeats, rubbing at the stripe over his eyebrows.

Closing his eyes, Dean takes a swig of beer, then aims the bottle’s mouth at Sam. “Patron saint of the lost.”

“Lost,” Sam says, feeling stricken from a mighty height. “Me.”

He takes a drink, two’s the magic number, numb and burning, watches his brother down the rest of his beer too fast, reach for another because two’s the magic number.

They drink in angry silence, Dean turned away and Sam stares at the rise and fall of his chest.

“You were gone to California,” Dean says, voice caught, like how Sam’s throat feels, raw. “Lost, and I couldn’t. Couldn’t find you. Like I’d fucking left you on a highway somewhere. There wasn’t a way back.”

 

[xxxiv.]

Some of the nights in California were long black nights full to the brim with insomnia, Sam heading out to walk the streets and sometimes he thought he would wander out too far, wouldn’t find the way back and it would be too late, he would have to keep walking until he found something familiar.

It feels like Sam’s drunk a whole bar.

“All those suicides,” Dean says, the words drawn out and slow, and Sam doesn’t know if he can stand it, this story too many days in the telling. “All those suicides and I thought, what if I can’t get back.”

“You fucker.”

“Oh, fuck you, Sam.” Dean sits up from the couch, snags another beer and almost cuts his palm opening it. “You would’ve been fine.”

“No, you have no idea. _None._ ,” Sam says, and then he doesn’t know what else to say. Whatever happens, you never hear the bullet that kills you even if you’re the one pulling the trigger.

But Dean keeps talking, as if Sam hasn’t spoken out loud. “The queen, the dead one, yeah, that still kills me, wish you could’ve seen it. That little girl, she took me by the hand, gave me a knife and said, ‘ _Tranquilo._ It’ll be okay.’”

And Sam’s holding his breath, his heart beating harder to pick up the slack; he can’t believe so much about this night, how much trouble they’ve gotten into with a handful of words.

The recent past on his heels, he hears himself in his head asking Dean when they were north of the Mason-Dixon, _what do you think I want from you._ He’s trying so hard to stay and tell Dean how he wants everything.

The Dean here and now stares at the ceiling, resigned to a fate Sam can’t see. Like suicide.

The Dean here and now opens his mouth and says, “I asked for the same thing that you asked for.”

 

[xxxv.]

It’s hard to fight with your brother when he won’t fight back.

At some point, Sam scoots up the bed, rucking the sheets underneath him as he props himself and the bottle of Jack against the headboard to continue watching Dean.

Dean goes back to not looking at him directly, drinking his way through the sixer, sprawled on the couch as if he was punched and fell there.

It’s bad tonight, not one of their best and brightest moments. The A/C kicks on, trying to push the air, but it only makes the room smell damp, maybe the swamp is seeping in, rising to meet and claim them.

Sam thinks, Let it come, because he can’t really taste the alcohol anymore. There’s no burn left.

It’s bad tonight, black as fucking tar. They’re a broken record, gouged and warped, and the needle skips so that they replay the same scratch over and over.

He closes his eyes, pushing sloppy fingers through his hair, and then he can feel it, Dean’s gaze on him like a living breathing thing, and it’s prickling along his limbs.

“Dean.”

But his brother doesn’t say anything and Sam doesn’t know what to say next and he’s so fucking _tired_ –

 

[xxxvi.]

The bed shifts and Sam’s blindingly awake, because it’s morning and it’s late, the sun going for broke. He’s sweating in his clothes, much much much too warm, and sometime in the night, he must have tried to crack open his skull because his head aches like he took a drill to it.

The bed shifts again and there’s a hiss, slow, soft, an undercurrent of invitation.

Sam’s curled on his side, unconsciously leaving room for Dean, but Dean isn’t there.

A snake winds itself next to him, black oil-bead eyes never leaving Sam as its body writhes and twists into a thrown coil. The light doesn’t catch on its scales, as if it’s a drain, an absence of anything, warmth, life.

But it’s moving, swaying a little closer, and Sam isn’t scared, just fascinated by how it bends, how it curves seemingly without thought, without blinking, a long trail of scales tapering to a diamond head and wet eyes.

He has nothing to be afraid of, nothing at all, as the snake winds around itself, always moving, a slow-motion thrashing along its body.

He remembers the alcohol, every single drop, and how fucked up he and his brother are, how everything he asked for is now smashed because he asked for it. Something jars inside him, like a completed circuit, but the remorse overwhelms it, a bag pulled over his head, hello darkness, my old friend.

The snake is rising out of its coil as if to meet him and its tongue flicks out to greet him and Sam is curious, he knows now, he’s curious what suicide would feel like, taking his life before anyone or anything else could, letting it bleed out so he’s left empty.

Sam.

He hears his name, agitated, like a fly bumping against glass. But now he’s curious, now he wants to know completely and the black in the snake’s eyes tell him how easy it would be, a simple knife curve without thought, a slow-motion thrash right down his wrists.

 _Sam. Sam!_

His name, coming from some otherworld and he thinks, Stop saying my name. It makes it that much harder.

But Dean. Dean wouldn’t be so fucked up, he wouldn’t have his little brother asking for such fucking out-of-the-question things, such hopeless demands on their shared blood and bones.

He slips his hand under the pillow, Dean’s pillow, and he knew it would be there, he knows his brother, the knife he sleeps with that gives him such bloody dreams.

The snake’s mouth opens approvingly, fangs sharp and piercing, and Sam wants see them to sink into his skin.

Smoke pours fast from the snake’s mouth, roiling and swirling, and the smoke has eyes, it can see Sam, it’s looking right into him, it has eyes.

Something jars inside him, the circuit, and Dean’s saying his name, Sammy, and Sam’s selfish, he wants to hear it again, the circuit under his ribs sparking, and the snake rises closer, the smoke has eyes, and Dean, _oh fuck_ , Dean –

There’s a pop and the snake’s head explodes.

 

[xxxvii.]

A scream, shrilly inhuman, and the smoke streams out of the room, under the door, screaming as it goes, the sound splitting through Sam’s head.

Then silence, and Sam lets go of the knife.

"Holy. _Shit_ ," Sam says, staring at the headless snake on the bed, a limp coil of scales, then he glances around for Dean, trying to regain his sight, and his brother comes through in high vivid color. He’s quick, hauling Sam to his feet, roughly, which is good because Sam might be in shock, he can't feel his hands, he can’t feel his hands, so he says, "Jinkies."

Dean laughs, this crooked sound in an I-can't-believe-this way, then he kisses Sam, mouths slotting warm, but it's fast, like something he shouldn't have done. Dean can't think like that, he can't be allowed to think like that and Sam's reaching for him, but Dean steps back, because distance is the only thing that works on Sam.

Dean’s still holding the gun, teeth working at his bottom lip, but Sam can’t help it, staring openly at him because that was a lottery winner shot, shot heard ‘round the world, and only Dean could have made it, the same guy Sam knows who used to stand in the woods unarmed and shout obscenities at the things that wanted to kill him, the same guy Sam has always known to have his back, no matter what the cost.

“Dean, you. I, I, Dean, I can’t – you –“

“Save the sonnets for later, Shakespeare. I just shot a snake in our motel room. So _unless_ you wanna be real up close and personal with the local PD, pack up.”

Sam can move now, though he still can’t feel his hands and they’re peeling out of the parking lot before he can say, “You just shot a snake in our motel room.”

“Glad you’ve got a grasp on the situation, Sammy.”

 

[xxxviii.]

They’re circling town, looking for a place to hole up for a few hours when Dean stumbles across the café again. He makes a happy sound Sam isn’t sure he’s heard since Dean was fourteen and then they have ash on their boots and ash in their mouths and Dean’s cradling his cup as if he can’t get warm.

"Got a surefire hangover fix; really, it'll cure what ails ya. It's called watching your brother almost commit suicide in front of you with your favorite knife under the spell of a demon snake."

"Dean."

"Or maybe snake demon."

"Dean."

"Wording’s important. It's either a demon inside a snake, or it's a snake-related demon, or it could be –"

"Dean." Sam rolls his eyes.

The tension is still laid thick like the humidity, the fight for Sam's life hanging around like gunsmoke, but Dean cracks him open without much effort, does it constantly without knowing it. Adept at breaking and entering, a thief if Sam ever saw one, and Dean doesn’t even have to think about it, does it as easy as turning a key.

It’s a pair of nonchalant gestures, Dean rambling on at the mouth and drinking his chicory coffee, but Sam can see it for what it is: a surreptitious way to keep an eye on Sam, he’s seen this a million times in diners and bars, so Sam grins to disarm him and Dean smirks back and the coffee is burning off the fog.

Sam knocks their knees together, harder a second time for good luck so that Dean almost spills his coffee with a viciously uttered _motherfucker_ , but he doesn’t retaliate, not yet, and Sam will wait because that’s how the game is played.

There’s no way he can tell Dean he’s still awestruck by the perfect shot, bullet right where it needed to be at the exact moment it needed to be there and he’s a teenager again, jittering for his older brother, like all those times when they’d created chaos together; there’s no way he can tell Dean except to knock knees again, kick Dean in the shin, trap Dean’s feet with his own.

“Are you fucking done yet?” Dean splutters around a mouthful of coffee.

Sam lets his grin curl bigger, lunatic-sized.

A car drives by, slices of light reflecting across their table and Dean says, “I don’t think she’s a queen.”

“What gave you that impression.” Ash on Sam’s fingers, so he wipes them on his jeans, gray streaks, then he wipes at the streaks.

“Just a feeling. A hunch.”

“One of your famous hunches,” Sam says.

“Yeah, man, this one might take the top spot. C’mon, you went to her for ‘help’” – Dean makes air quotes, one hand holding his cup – “and she tried to kill you. Suicide you. Take your soul or something. Whatever. Fucking demons.” He looks completely disgusted and annoyed.

“Bait,” Sam reminds him.

In response, Dean grunts into his cup, muttering.

Her eyes looked so fucking black, and suddenly, Sam sees a few pieces come together.

“Dean –“

“Dude, you think the snakes are her minions? She just sends them out –“

“To collect for her,” Sam finishes. “Like she’s collecting souls.”

“Or something,” Dean says.

“Or something,” Sam agrees.

Of course Dean sees it about the same time. Of course.

Ash on the tabletop and Dean draws in it, little symbols and maps, his initials and Sam’s initials, something that looks like a schematic of a engine, his boots kicking against Sam’s as he shifts in his seat.

This café in Louisiana, drinking chicory coffee with his brother, a relic from an ancient history Sam’s learning, in the heat and humidity with voodoo queens and abandoned churches, demon snakes or snake demons, this is where he wants to be, this is what Sam needs to tell Dean. When he glances up from Dean’s hands to say it, Dean’s got this small smile on his face, the one he gets at high speeds and after sex, and Sam thinks, Save the sonnets for later, Shakespeare.

With the flat of his palm, Dean wipes out everything except their initials. “Think you’re doing laundry for the next month.”

Sam swallows and nods, feels the sweat gathering along his spine. “Think I can handle that.”

“No, two. Three, _three_ months.”

“Nope, too late, you said a month, one month.”

“Next time, I’ll fucking miss, just for you.”

“Like you got a choice. You couldn’t hit the side of the car at point-blank range.”

“Why would I shoot the car.”

The place serves food too, fried catfish and beans and dirty rice, so they stay until Sam’s hands stop vibrating on the tabletop and Dean’s had enough coffee to put down small horse. The snake skeleton keeps them company.

Out at the car, Dean catches him against the shotgun door and kisses him, and Sam holds on as if he really was scared there for a brief second.

 

[xxxix.]

“You think she killed her sister?” Dean asks, chewing on a hangnail and Sam leans against him to watch out Dean’s window as Cassidy Rawls walks to the mailbox and flips through her mail.

It’s unthinkable to Sam, murdering a sibling, but he remembers her smile, undercut by firelight, the smile that didn’t match her sister’s. “Yeah, maybe.”

“Maybe,” Dean echoes. He gives up on the hangnail and tangles his hand in Sam’s hair. “Oh, gross, dude, you’re all sweaty and damp.”

“Like you’re daisy fresh,” Sam retorts, rubbing his chin on Dean’s shoulder. “Didn’t exactly get to shower. Someone decided to shoot the local wildlife. Inside my motel room.”

“What the fuck ever.”

“You owe me a shower,” Sam says as Cassidy gets into her car, the engine sputtering to life, and Dean shoves Sam back over into the shotgun seat, ready to follow her.

“You owe me a blowjob,” he says, throwing the car into gear and Sam says, “We keeping count now?” and Dean retorts, “I shot a snake in the head,” and Sam makes it clear, “I’m the victim here, _bait_ , Dean,” and they argue the whole way down the street, trailing behind Cassidy’s car.

They have luck on their side, somehow, maybe in the feathers and blood they found scattered over the windshield a few hours ago, a cat licking its paws and muzzle as it sat on the hood, because here in the South, the omens are different. They had to coax the cat off the car with a bowl of milk from the café kitchen. Luck is Cassidy heading straight out of town an hour before the sun sets, along the route the priest drew for Sam on the back of a pizza delivery flyer. Luck is having ash on their boots and salt in their pockets and a feather each tied to their belt loops.

Then it’s not luck, just them, Sam knowing they can take on the world because their names run together. Guns tucked in their waistbands, their shadows aligning together, and Dean is breathing next to him.

But Sam has to say something before they do this, luck or no luck, he needs to be grounded again. He doesn’t think, just opens his mouth and says, “I’m not a lost object, Dean.”

Dean shoots him with a finger gun from the hip. “Great pep talk, Coach.” He pats Sam on the belly and that’s all Sam needs, the conduit between him and Dean and his feet on the ground.

As with any good standoff that could ramp up into a shootout, they aren’t going in guns blazing and they’re hoping for the element of surprise. This time it’s Dean headed into the trees, the sun turning him red and gold, some sort of creature summoned there and briefly, Sam’s brain is unconvinced the ritual didn’t mark him for death, instead it brought this Dean here, this red and gold devil Sam would follow to the ends of the earth because Dean’s smiling dangerous and he’s got a gun.

Dean calls her name in the stand of trees, “Cassidy. Cassidy Rawls.”

One of the doors to the church opens, swinging wide and showing a maw of shadows, the wood creaking out its age and she steps onto the sagging porch under the cross. She’s dripping with swamp water, the fabric of the long white dress forming to her waist and hips and thighs as she emerges from the church. The crooked window frames watch her go, as if she’s leaving something behind in the abandoned house of worship.

A brown ring around her neck and a tall pillar candle in her hand, lit, the tiny flame trying to blacken the sides of the glass, the Virgin painted on the side, in her heart-of-the-sky blue as she bares her own heart, thorns and roses, and she burns from within.

Cassidy tips her head as she walks, balancing the candle so the flame doesn’t go out. “Did you need something?”

“Yeah, I needed to get a question answered,” Dean says, his smile changing to the one he uses on tired waitresses and uncertain receptionists.

Sam is nearby, settled on his haunches in the grasses by a tree, he’s close enough to see and hear them, but in the fading light, it looks like Cassidy’s necklace moves, shifts a little around her throat, then her hair swings and hides it. He catches a quicksilver glint against her side, the knife, the folds of her dress concealing it in her other hand.

“Let me start the fire and we can begin,” she says, putting the candle on the ground, but then she stops and stares at Dean. “You aren’t a believer. Why are you here?”

Shrugging, Dean says, “I have a question. Figured you could help me. So the story goes.”

She waves a hand, a quick annoyed gesture. “This isn’t –“

“You aren’t the real queen, are you?” Dean interrupts and her body language changes so fast, Sam pulls his gun, but Dean’s still talking. “No, you aren’t the queen. It was your sister, wasn’t it.”

Reaching up to her necklace, almost a nervous motion, Cassie shifts her weight, like she’s deciding how best to stalk him, looking for the opening to pounce and Sam decides enough is enough. He stands and walks out of the trees, straightening his shoulders, feeling like a ghost pulled out of the dark.

Her eyes look so fucking black when she turns to Sam and she smiles again, that broken edge smile and the air starts to shiver around them.

“You. So glad you’re back,” she says, fingers curling defensively around the brown ring at her throat and Sam says, “Did you kill your sister.”

Her knife hand flashes at them as the necklace falls out of its spiral and rewraps around her wrist, sliding sinuous along her arm, a long scaled body tapering to a diamond head and wet eyes.

Sighing loudly, Dean pulls his gun, “Oh, this day is just getting better and better. Does this state have anything _besides_ snakes?” and Sam wants to remind him, gators, but Cassidy’s gaze has gone wide and fragmented.

“Did I kill my sister,” she repeats, monotone, which creeps Sam right the fuck out, like she’s broken down, a mechanical wonder rusted to its core and next to him, Dean gives a little shudder.

“My _sister_ didn’t even want her birthright. They thought it would be me, and then my grandmother died, but _nothing happened to me._ She didn’t want it, she didn’t _want it_ ,” Cassidy snaps, not even noticing their guns trained on her, the sudden vicious flare in Dean’s eyes. There’s a rippling in the water and a surge in the air, the candle popping at Cassidy’s feet. It could be bad tonight.

“She wanted to be normal, like all those other people in this stupid town. Wished she didn’t know what she knew. But me,” Cassidy says, tapping her collarbone carelessly hard with the knife tip and spots of blood bloom into the dirty white of the dress, “ _me_ , I wanted it so bad, I almost burnt our house down. All that energy in the air? It was _everywhere_ and I couldn’t have it.”

“Cassidy –“ Sam says and the snake bares its fangs, hissing from her wrist, and Sam knows, he wants to tell her so badly, he knows, getting out, getting away, because everything in front of you is not yours, so you take what you can and don’t look back. “Your sister –“

“She was your sister, Cassidy,” Dean says, words as metallic as his gun.

Nodding, her hair lights up with the last flares of sunlight, so much red in the night swamp.

“And he’s your brother, isn’t he,” she replies, knife held out at Sam, her wrist turning the blade’s edge to him, a threat and ultimatum. “If he ever left you, would you kill him?”

Dean takes a breath.

The snake sways on her arm, head following their movements, tongue flicking out to taste the air, ozone and sage in the heat.

“Yeah, see. She was going to _leave_. She didn’t understand. Ever. The only reason she was fucking Boudreaux was to have a baby to raise and continue the bloodline. She was leaving me.” Cassidy licks her lips. “Then I met this man.”

“And he solved all your problems and you lived happily ever after,” Dean says and she spits on the ground at his feet.

Then she smiles and the snake writhes a little, gathering itself closer on her wrist, and it could be bad tonight, a real barnburner.

“This man, you shoulda seen him, he had red eyes. Bright as new dimes, all for me, and I thought, that’s my ticket. Never turn down a man with red eyes and a killer smile.”

The sun falls and Sam picks up the pieces.

“You made a deal,” he says, voice sounding overused, “you made a deal with a demon.”

His brother bumps into his shoulder and mutters low, like wonder, “Unfuckingbelievable.”

Cassidy laughs, a sound like a pour of water and the knife bounces with her. “Hell yeah, I did. I get Laurie’s powers and my red-eyed man gets payment in full. I think the rent is souls, but it’s not too steep for me. And lemme tell ya, everything tastes amazing.”

She laughs again, her gaze blacked out again, splintered as if she can see the underworld layer around them, the swamp water rippling, and something’s coming, ready to surface with teeth and menace.

Then Cassidy swings her arm and throws the snake at Dean.

Sam sees it, like the underworld layer around them, in the purple dusk with the candle’s snapping light, he sees it in heightened speed, so fast he doesn’t think as Dean dodges the snake and misses Cassidy lunging for him with her knife.

Sam shoots her in the shoulder, the impact spinning her, this small girl in her white dress, and she stumbles sideways, trips, lands heavily on her side. Her bare feet push into the dirt and leaves as she tries to stand, pulling her knees under her and she’s crying as she sways upright.

The knife is in her ribs.

Blood soaks into her dress, already wet from the swamp water and she cries, saying one word over and over, slurred and soft.

Dean reaches her first, carefully picking her up and her back arches, fights him, the knife making a wet sound in her chest. Sam helps lay her down on the church porch, the wood splintered and stripped underneath them. He presses a hand to her wound as Dean tries to talk to her, calm her.

She cries, saying one word over and over, Laurie Laurie Laurie.

The snake slithers off into the tangled grasses.

 

[xl.]

When they leave, Sam blows out the candle, the Virgin in her heart-of-the-sky blue.

He glances back where she died, her hair hanging over the edge of the porch and the water sounds like it’s pouring, pooling. He blinks and sees a pair of red eyes at the far boundary of the trees, but Dean’s got him by the arm, pulling him away, talking fast on his cell phone, yeah, man, I think there’s been an accident outside of town.

Then they’re in the car, hands held gingerly high, attempting to not get blood anywhere, and Dean has to wipe his palms on his jeans, clean his hands with old water from a bottle found under Sam’s seat before he can drive and they don’t talk for sixty miles.

They drive through the night, the headlights igniting the roads down here in the South and Sam thinks they’re headed west, that’s the way it feels.

Dean stops at the first hotel that doesn’t have “inn” in the name and it’s decent, clean, the A/C kicks on proper-like, with cool air and Sam’s suddenly freezing, the air and the sweat on his skin.

He’s thought about it the whole drive here, to wherever they are, he’s thought about asking Dean that same persistent burr of a question, the one haunting Sam since New England.

Sam already knows the answer though, when Dean gets the room and there’s only one bed. He tries to climb into the shower with Sam, but the stall is completely too small for both of them to be in there without causing structural and extensive water damage, and Dean smirks big, eyebrow raised, a hand on Sam’s chest too long and too warm before he shoves him out into the cold manufactured air.

He knows when he crawls into bed and Dean’s right behind him, still wet and slick from the shower, getting the sheets damp; he falls asleep to Dean’s weight against his side, Dean’s thumb rubbing over his lower lip.

In the morning, late, the sun finding the breaks in the blinds, Dean bites down on his hipbone and Sam jerks, curls over his brother.

The coffee is the same now, regular burnt diner coffee; Dean makes a face and a disgusted sound to go with it and Sam dumps sugar in his cup without even tasting it first.

Watching the cars in the parking lot, Dean doesn’t look at him, says, “I do, y’know. This. Us.”

But Sam doesn’t need to hear it anymore. He shuts Dean up before Dean can start rambling and say something stupid, knocking their knees together until Dean glances over, and Sam kisses him hard so he can’t get away. They taste of bacon grease and egg yolks and hot sauce.

Back on the road, déjà vu all over again.

They might be in another state when Sam cracks a drowsy eye open and sees the smile, the one Dean gets at high speeds and after sex.

Are you a believer. The thing is, Sam prays. _I believe in my brother._

**Author's Note:**

> Knowing me, despite my research, it’s highly likely I got details wrong and I do apologize; however, in my defense, I wanted things to be a bit off and wrong. Excuses, excuses. Simon & Garfunkel, Genesis 3:15, Scooby Doo. Party down.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Believer](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1023110) by [Niko_Podfic (Niko)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Niko/pseuds/Niko_Podfic)




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